Insect to Injury

This is the simplest of plots but it is "cute" and a lot fun to watch as Popeye battles the most destructive group of termites you've ever seen.

Popeye is singing while working on the roof of his house constructing a chimney, which he does in about two seconds! "Now me house is finished," he boasts as he does the last chore: paint his name on his mailbox, which is on a post outside. To his horror, the mailbox disappears quickly in the ground. Popeye gets out a magnifying glass and sees an army of "toimites" marching in file - hundreds with antennae and sadistic grins on their faces!

The whole cartoon is battling these monsters who can devour the entire house in seconds! Watching them work, section-by-section, is really incredible to see. How Popeye combats these "vultures" is fun to see, too. His attitude is fantastic, never seeming to lose his cool. despite some catastrophic events.

I wish they would have made more of these inventive stories. Sometimes you get tired of the same old Popeye vs. Bluto over Olive themes. This was great stuff!

A bunch of insects eating the wood house of Popeye. The war. And , after huge effort, lost of each part of house , the so useful spinach giving not only streght but a lovely ironed idea. Nice end because the victim it is the pipe itself . But not all is lost. Short, just charming.

The Paramount/Famous Studios' Popeye worked best as a hero when he wasn't fighting Bluto (or some other guy) over Olive Oyl. Bluto (or the other guy) often outclassed The Sailor Man and got lots of encouragement from fickle Olive, so we sometimes felt that Popeye was the interloper, horning in on someone else's romance. Not very heroic. But here, in this picture, Popeye takes on a swarm of marauding termites in a battle of wits that would do even the Warner Brothers cartoon characters proud. And we root for Popeye the whole way. A very inventive cartoon and one of the studio's best. I paricularly liked the termites forming a jack to lift the lid off of their trash can trap.

This episode of the long-running series of Popeye cartoons is a bit of a relief, as Popeye, having just built a house singlehandedly, is confronted not with Bluto fighting for the hand of Olive Oyl, but by toimites who..... excuse me. Termites, who wish to devour his wooden home.

It's a well done cartoon, with the little critters usually represented by a mass of black dots which erase all wooden objects. Certainly, Popeye's frustration is understandable, as are the appetites of the insects, and if they do the same thing in the same way, again and again, there are enough small variations on the theme to keep this going throughout the length of the cartoon.

Insect to Injury (1956)

*** (out of 4)

Popeye has just completed building his dream home but things take a sour turn when a group of termites show up and they want to eat anything they can.

Fans of the Popeye series will find this short to be another winner as there are plenty of laughs throughout as well as some good action. Of course, the various highlights surround the termites doing the damage to Popeye's house as he frantically tries to stop them. This here leads to a nice sequence dealing with a lawnmower as well as some creative moments after Popeye eats his spinach.