Catching Trouble

Catching Trouble is now mostly known for its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is a short film documenting the activities of Ross,who works for the Chicago Zoo as an animal catcher. What ensues is some of the more harrowing animal cruelty you'll find in a film outside Cannibal Holocaust.

Over the course of ten minutes, Ross captures bob cats, bear cubs, and rattlesnakes. Only the rattlesnake sequence isn't cringe inducing. Ross cuts down trees and drags around screaming baby animals. The scene with the bear cubs is particularly disgusting, particularly when one considers that back in the old days, zoos frequently obtained baby animals by killing their mothers.

Best watched either for dark comedy, as in the case of MST3K, or as a document of attitudes toward animals during the 1930s.

This is a short film that definitely doesn't stand up to the test of time. I'm sure it was pretty exciting when it was first released in 1950. These days, it's seen as a man raping the environment. Ross goes around and catches some animals in the Florida everglades. The narrator's pretty obscenely cheerful as well.

Horrifying mistreatment of animals on public display, given a light touch by the commentary, which makes it even more disturbing. A shocking indictment of attitudes towards animals in general, whose only grace is that it shows us how much those attitudes have improved since then.

"Catching Trouble" sucks period. It features the cruel Ross who catches animals for zoos with his faithful Indian sidekick, "Ol' Sourpuss" or something like that. Ross adventures around to bring bear cubs, snakes, wild cats, and other animals back to the zoo in ways which would make the Animal Humane Society want to burn every existing copy of this.

I highly recommend watching the MST3k version of this stinker.

This disgusting short is literally only watchable when i'm watching the MST3K version, as the riffs (plus the segment that follows, called Catching Ross) make it semi-tolerable.