Imagination débordante

A Walt Disney DONALD DUCK Cartoon.

It's DUCK PIMPLES for Donald and his overactive imagination when he falls asleep while listening to a suspenseful radio program.

The Duck gets swept up into the search for purloined pearls in this very funny & bizarre little film. The cartoon's backhanded salute to the power of old-time radio drama is more than justified. Clarence Nash provided Donald with his unique voice.

Walt Disney (1901-1966) was always intrigued by pictures & drawings. As a lad in Marceline, Missouri, he sketched farm animals on scraps of paper; later, as an ambulance driver in France during the First World War, he drew comic figures on the sides of his vehicle. Back in Kansas City, along with artist Ub Iwerks, Walt developed a primitive animation studio that provided animated commercials and tiny cartoons for the local movie theaters. Always the innovator, his ALICE IN CARTOONLAND series broke ground in placing a live figure in a cartoon universe. Business reversals sent Disney & Iwerks to Hollywood in 1923, where Walt's older brother Roy became his lifelong business manager & counselor. When a mildly successful series with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit was snatched away by the distributor, the character of Mickey Mouse sprung into Walt's imagination, ensuring Disney's immortality. The happy arrival of sound technology made Mickey's screen debut, STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928), a tremendous audience success with its use of synchronized music. The SILLY SYMPHONIES soon appeared, and Walt's growing crew of marvelously talented animators were quickly conquering new territory with full color, illusions of depth and radical advancements in personality development, an arena in which Walt's genius was unbeatable. Mickey's feisty, naughty behavior had captured millions of fans, but he was soon to be joined by other animated companions: temperamental Donald Duck, intellectually-challenged Goofy and energetic Pluto. All this was in preparation for Walt's grandest dream - feature length animated films. Against a blizzard of doomsayers, Walt persevered and over the next decades delighted children of all ages with the adventures of Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi & Peter Pan. Walt never forgot that his fortunes were all started by a mouse, or that childlike simplicity of message and lots of hard work always pay off.

As a child I found Duck Pimples fascinating, as a young adult I still do as well as lots of fun. Donald is different somewhat to the persona we usually see him with, usually he is easily frustrated and temperamental, here he is more passive and more of a punch-bag I suppose for the detective. This is an example of Disney doing something atypical, breaking the mold as you will, and doing it extremely well. Besides I do like this side to Donald, even I am more used to the temperamental side. The other characters formulating Duck Pimples right from the slinky woman to the Irish cop are stereotypical, but used to great value comedically, so what could've been an issue wasn't. Duck Pimples also has an interesting story, rapid pacing and a lot of goofy details that has a feel to the very best of Looney Tunes, but used to very imaginative effect here. The gags come by thick and fast, and often hilarious even if silly in tone in how Donald is accused of all these crimes. The animation is colourful and crisp, the music is energetic and the voice work is great from Clarence Nash and Billy Bletcher. In a nutshell, an awesome cartoon and one of Donald's best. 10/10 Bethany Cox

This is one of the weirdest and most surreal shorts I have ever seen and it's really a surprise that it came from Disney. Unlike a typical Donal Duck film, this one has a bizarre stream of consciousness that defies my ability to explain it in mere words. Believe me...it's really weird--like the Disney staff decided to try making a short after taking some LSD or something!

Donald is at home reading and listening to the radio. The stuff he's being bombarded with is pretty scary and suddenly the radio show and book start coming to life! Characters from a murder mystery come jumping out of his book and the radio provides lots of appropriate creepy music. It's crazy--and well worth seeing just because it is so atypical. About the only Donald film I've ever seen that comes close to this one in weirdness is "Der Fuehrer's Face". Yes, it's that weird--with very elastic characters, a pre-Jessica Rabbit sort of hot dame and a style that just seems so un-Disney. Well worth seeing.

In this Disney cartoon, Donald reads a mystery book sold to him by an oddball salesman and becomes so involved in that his imagination makes it appear the characters are coming to life, making Donald the center of the mystery caper. What results is this detective-like but unexciting whodunit mystery that features these random characters, including one that resembles Jessica Rabbit.

This is not the conventional humorous, action-flicked and bad luck-plaque Donald Duck cartoon. I didn't get a whole lot of laughs from this one. The attempt at the mystery setting is clever and the animation is great, but the overall story itself is pretty boring, unfortunately.

Grade D-

Walt Disney Productions produced Donald Duck's most morbid film in August 1945's "Duck Pimples." The web site Cartoon Brew called the animation "the creepiest Disney short ever made." As Donald listens to a scary radio serial during one stormy evening at home, he's disturbed by its content. Suddenly a hulking gruff man knocks on the door. It's a salesman who quickly departs, leaving his inventory of books. Film noir characters emerge from the books, scaring the bejeezus out of Donald, who's threatened by a thug with a knife while a detective from the pages confronts an unsavory character wielding an axe.

"Duck Pimples" was distributed by RKO, whose studio was well known for its drenching horror and crime movies. One character stands out as the sexy woman Pauline, a dead ringer to Jessica Rabbit, wife of Roger Rabbit in the 1981 film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." The dark Disney cartoon was a perfect complement to Alfred Hitchcock's 1945 "Spellbound" when both played in a Chicago theater on the same bill.