Swing Shift Cinderella

The second of Tex Avery's three Red Hot Cinderella cartoons keeps up the pace, as voice artist Sara Bermer seems to voice everyone but the Wolf. The story is that the audience stopped the show for the first one, insisting the theater show the cartoon again. This one certainly keeps up the pace!

There are a lot of contemporary gags that will not have aged well for a modern audience, but with Heck Allen doing the script, there are enough gags to keep you smiling.

The Big Bad Wolf stops chasing Little Red Riding Hood. Instead, he starts chasing Cinderella. Fairy Godmother intervenes. This is a more adult theme cartoon. It's Tex Avery with the Wolf and that happens a lot sometimes. He's a more dangerous Pepé le Pew. I wouldn't mind more expressions from Cinderella but she is basically the super hot Instagram model. This is fun but not necessarily for kids.

This cartoon is just great! Lots of sight gags, a fair number of topical gags framed on the war and life on the home front and the most entetaining fairy godmother to come down the pike in quite a while. Another "fairytale" cartoon by Avery that is ribald and lecherous and pokes fun at everything, including itself. Tex Avery was incredible. The bit with the jeep is beautiful! The swimmers make the final turn, they're coming to the wall-it's a world record! Recommended!

This is a wonderful film and about the best cartoon ever directed by Tex Avery--or anyone else for that matter. That's actually saying a lot because his films for MGM are as good or better than the best at Warner Brothers/Loony Tunes or the Tom and Jerry films (these MGM shorts were not directed by Avery). It's only been in recent years that a real appreciation of his work has been growing--especially with the release of the movie THE MASK--which was strongly inspired by the way over-the-top zaniness of his very surreal cartoons.

This film starts with a wolf chasing Little Red Riding Hood. They actually run past the film's title at which point the wolf stops and tells the kid to scram--at which point he goes on the prowl for the incredibly sexy Swing Shift Cinderalla (a reference to the ladies who worked the "swing shifts" at wartime armament factories). In addition to the wolf's crazy escapades chasing the lady, the Fairy Godmother gets involved and chases the wolf! Throughout all this there are amazing and silly sight gags--coming so fast that there are enough for two or three cartoons. Among my favorites were the mallets crashing over the head, the wolf's reactions when he first meets Cinderella and when the Fairy Godmother accidentally transforms herself into "Miss Gruesome". A wonderful, high-energy and intensely entertaining film not to be missed.

By the way, if you liked this, try watching Avery's RED HOT RIDING HOOD--a very similar film from MGM that was made two years earlier and with very similar themes.

Let's face it. Tex Avery was a one of a kind director of animated shorts. The best thing that could happen to his career was being fired by Leon Schlesenger at Warner Brothers. This allowed Avery to migrate over to M-G-M to direct a series of frantic, fast paced animated shorts for Fred Quimby. Swing Shift Cinderella was probably the best of the batch (or at least among the best, at any rate). The plot has the wolf tiring of chasing Little Red Riding Hood,only to want to pursue Cinderella (a lounge singer/assembly line worker). As in any Avery short,there is no lack of visual gags (which can run from the truly silly to outright surreal). The short manages to get some good use of mish mashing the whole Cinderella/Little Red Riding Hood plot line (with Hood's grandmother tossed in for good measure). Thankfully, Avery's animated shorts exist on a series of DVD's, for future generations to enjoy (about the only thing will be the countless WWII references and in jokes that will go sailing right over their heads).