Spies

Chuck Jones's 'Spies' is one of the best Private Snafu cartoons made for the military. Used to instruct soldiers against certain behaviour by using Snafu to epitomise it, the Snafu cartoons were known for their bawdier nature inserted to keep the soldiers' attention. So 'Spies' features some prominent breast-based recording equipment, then-risqué use of the word "Hell" and a great horse's ass joke. Directed with great flair by Jones, 'Spies' main trump card is a cracking, witty script entirely in rhyme written by none other than the great Dr. Suess. Suess and Jones were a match made in heaven, as the classic 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' would later attest, and this early collaboration between the two is a worthy forerunner. Though it only lasts about three minutes in total, 'Spies' packs in plenty of laughs and sneaks its message in amongst them so that the audience doesn't feel it has been crammed down their throats at the end.

The flow of the story and gags work perfectly in this one.

All has to do with Snafu trying not to reveal a secret to the spies that are following him.

This was made back when Germany and Japan was the enemy of America. So allot of the spies are mostly German, Japanese or just some sneaky looking fellas.

what also cool is it's the only Snafu cartoon with a cartoon version of Hitler himself.

Please note that this film is banned along with other Snafu shorts due to it having racist stuff on the Japanese.

So I won't recommend showing this to anyone who is Japanese or German to prevent any offending.

besides that it is a great WW2 short.

For several of the shorts in this series, Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) scripted and the speech patterns here reflect his quite familiar cadence. It's great! Private Snafu really screws up royally here, which was the point, as the series was meant to show soldiers what not to do and what the consequences could be. These are not balanced and fair cartoons-there was a war on at the time and Germany and Japan were the ENEMY, so the caricatures are not nice. If you are easily offended, you likely won't like these. The series is great and well worth watching. Recommended.

Spies (1943)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

The third film in the War Department's attempt to teach soldiers certainly lessons. Sprivate Snafu is trained on what one shouldn't do because you never know where spies might be listening. As with the first two films, this clocks in under four minutes so there's certainly no major plot or character development. The only thing you really need to know is that the Snafu character was an idiot who constantly did the wrong thing. This includes giving small hints that someone could put together to find out important information. The War Department must have known a dunk soldier is the worst thing as that's the main focus here. Overall there's certainly nothing great or awful about this picture. It's certainly entertaining but at the same time it doesn't have anything special that makes it a classic. It's certainly interesting since it was an education tool during WWII.

This film must be understood in the context for which it was made. While this is a film made by talent from Warner Brothers (with voice work by Mel Blanc and production by the folks at Looney Toons), it was NOT intended for general release--but was meant to be shown to soldiers to illustrate the importance of keeping troop activities secret. You can tell this is the case for several reasons--the cartoon is black and white (when Looney Toons had just recently switched to color), the guy at the newspaper stand is reading a magazine entitled "SEX" and the female Nazi spy has a radio hidden in her boobs. This was certainly NOT intended to be seen by the kids! So, with it's more adult humor designed to appeal to those in combat, the movie did a wonderful job of conveying its central message in a cute way--using great animation and a crazy rhyming style that is very, very catchy. Even today, this film is worth seeing--not just by history teachers but by anyone wanting a good laugh or wanting to see what life was like during the war.