Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet

... not the least of which is looking at how a middle class couple lives in 1921.

The "rarebit fiend" is the husband who has eaten a Welsh rarebit - which is nothing more than cheese toast - and has a wild dream because of it.

In the dream, "the pet" wanders up to the couple's house, looking tired and hungry. The big hearted wife takes it in. It resembles a dog, but has blank eyes so you really see no expression of menace in its face. However, feeding it makes it grow, until it eventually attains a tremendous size and threatens the city. Planes and a zeppelin are dispatched to bring it down. It does sound a bit like King Kong in the end, doesn't it?

There is a great deal of detail in the drawings, so we can see that an urban couple in 1921 has an electric toaster (the pet eats it), and there are outdoor connections to running water and hoses attached. There is a great deal of detail shown in buildings and furnishings to the point where they look like photographs in some cases.

I found it odd that at one point , before the pet becomes completely outsized, that the husband goes to a pharmacy. He calls the pharmacist "Doc" and asks for an entire barrel of rat poison which is labeled "Rough On Rats". Doing something like that today would get you labeled a terrorist, and you would walk away with no rat poison. So you could buy rat poison in 1921, but it was illegal to be sold alcohol. Oh well, all times have their ridiculous situations.

This is a very interesting animation before Walt ever got involved in the business.

This is really obviously a movie from the early days of animation. It's of course completely done by hand all and even by just one person; Winsor McCay, who before venturing into animated movies was already a successful cartoonist.

The concept of this movie also comes from a successful newspaper cartoon done by him. This movie was the first out of three, which he based on his successful comic 'Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend'.

It really isn't a very smooth and stylized looking animated movie. The character movements are extremely awkward at times for instance and the sequences really don't always flow that well. Most sequences even feel overlong and it just doesn't always get to its point quick enough. Also the animation style itself, so its characters and such really aren't anything too impressive looking. The backgrounds on the other hand were quite good looking.

But as for the actual entertainment value of the movie, it's certainly a good enough movie to watch. It has an amusing concept, which get executed well, mostly in its second half.

The movie at its beginning cites Winsor McCay as the inventor of animated drawing but this simply isn't true and seems to be an early advertisement trick. it's true though that he was the first animator who's movies became a big commercial success as well and reached a wide audience with his movies.

Very early animated movie, that is still entertaining enough to watch now days.

7/10

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Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet (1921)

*** (out of 4)

Winsor McCay classic that makes you feel that the filmmakers of THE LOST WORLD and KING KONG might have been influenced by this. A husband brags about eating a delicious rarebit but this food always gives him weird dreams. In the dream, the wife takes in a cute animal and soon after it just keeps eating and eating while getting bigger and bigger. The thing eventually grows to the size where it begins to terrorize the city. McCay made three different "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend" films in 1921 and this here is certainly the best of the bunch. One could argue the creative issues seeing as how all three were pretty much the same story with different dreams but this here is so creative that you can't help but fall for it. The entire film has a very bizarre atmosphere working for it and a lot of credit has to go to McCay for coming up with such a strange looking animal. It's part pig, part dog and part teddy bear but it's certainly something impossible to forget. I thought the animation was a major step up from his previous films and just check out the scene where the animals is eating what appears to be beans off the floor. Just pay attention to the way the pile goes down as the creature eats them. Fans of McCay will certainly want to check this one out but fans of the surreal and bizarre should enjoy it as well.

This is an amusing and imaginative 'Rarebit Fiend' feature that makes good use out of one basic idea to provide material for a number of good moments. Most of it is simple elaboration on the basic premise, but the way that Winsor McCay steadily builds things up makes it work pretty well.

This time, the rarebit-induced dream concerns an unusual pet that quickly gets out of control. As its rampage gets worse and worse, some of the shots bring to mind similar sequences from numerous later movies, such as "King Kong" and "The Lost World", and this gives "The Pet" even extra interest.

In itself, it's pretty good as well. The animation is of McCay's usual high quality, and it works quite well for its era.

Based on McCay's cartoon strip, DREAMS OF THE RAREBIT FIEND, this concerns a tiny creature that eats everything and grows until it threatens the entire city. A seminal work, its influence shows up in Heinlein's novel THE STAR BEAST, Tex Avery's KING SIZE CANARY and in the final sequence of KING KONG! Bizarre and brilliant!