I am not a fan of Paul Terry's work. Throughout his forty years of cartoon production, his work seemed to excel mostly in terms of keeping in budget. However, in this early film -- his second cartoon and the first in which his long-running character, Farmer Alfalfa, appeared -- we are dealing with cartoons so early there are no rules and so everything seems inventive. There is a surreal quality in the way the gags are pulled off, in which plants yield pitchers of beer and the one title is rendered as a rhyming couplet.
This was a film considered lost for many years until Tom Stathes and David Gerstein found it looking through unidentified film clips at the Library of Congress. It's a decent film with many hallmarks of Paul Terry cheapness in it -- notice the repetition of motion during the chase. Yet because of its place in history, it is definitely worth seeing.
This was a film considered lost for many years until Tom Stathes and David Gerstein found it looking through unidentified film clips at the Library of Congress. It's a decent film with many hallmarks of Paul Terry cheapness in it -- notice the repetition of motion during the chase. Yet because of its place in history, it is definitely worth seeing.
