The Draft Horse

In what must have been one of the first WWII-themed cartoons from Warner Bros., a horse learns that the army is recruiting and decides to join. The only thing is, this particular horse acts more patriotic than any human could dream of being, to the point where he acts like he's on steroids or something! Once our equine friend enters, he misinterprets the order to strip. His reaction to "Say 'ah'" is the coolest that I've ever seen. Even after he gets rejected, more surprises lie in wait.

I'll say that even though I'm a pacifist, I've always liked the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies WWII-themed cartoons (especially if they have Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck clobbering witless Nazis). "The Draft Horse" is certainly a funny one.

This short from Looney Tunes is a wartime film with propaganda overtones. But, fortunately, it also has a sense of humor.

When the story begins, a very patriotic plow horse sees a billboard asking for horses for the war effort. He immediately takes off for the recruiter and goes through basic training....but not all well. By the end, the horse figures out another way to help the war effort.

This is a pleasant short from Chuck Jones. Could it have been a bit funnier? Yep...but it's entertaining and pleasant.

In a great bit of wartime fun, "The Draft Horse" shows what might happen if a farm horse wanders into its local recruitment office in a fit of patriotic fervor.

Chuck Jones always was a master of animation and proves it here yet again, aided and abetted by Mel Blanc's talented vocal abilities as the horse of the title who is put through a battery of tests to prove his battle-worthiness. All the while, the filly brays and whinnies at the thought of being a soldier.

After all the testing, the horse is classified a 4-F but that STILL isn't the end of the story in a neat twist at the end.

Nine stars. Classic wartime fluff about how the war on the homefront even affected the four-hooved among us.