Undescribable Perfection

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

"Duck Pimples" is an American 8-minute cartoon from 1945, so this one is already over 70 years old, actually soon 75 depending on when you read this review. The names of the director and the voice actors (most of them) quickly make clear that here we have another Disney color cartoon from the Golden Age of Animation near the end of WWII. The writers names are different though and you don't really associate them with Disney cartoons. Anyway, this may actually be among the key reasons why this did not really feel like a Donald cartoon anymore the longer it went. I would not have thought that the part of Donald making it himself cosy early on was already the best this film had to offer and it really wasn't great. The book seller guy was still okay too, but everything afterward was fairly weak including the entire crime mystery aspect and the characters related to it. Perhaps it would have worked better as a live action film I don't know. Usually if the supporting characters weren't that great in these old Disney cartoons, they at least had a way of making Donald look better, but he disappears in here for long moments really. All in all, not a good or funny watch by any means and this one lost itself in trying to be too different, smart and game-changing. Don't watch.

It seems to me that a lot of Disney's old cartoons had sort of a nasty side, and "Duck Pimples" is a prime example. I saw it on a video compilation called Scary Tales which also included a cartoon in which Pluto gets sent to Hell and put on trial for crimes against cats (that one was just inappropriate for children).Anyway, this one depicts Donald Duck letting his imagination get the better of him, as characters from books start coming to life. Borderline violent, it hardly seems like something that people should let the tykes watch. The Warner Bros. cartoons always took a cleverer approach to these things.What I noticed while reading the cast is the presence of Doodles Weaver. He was Sigourney Weaver's uncle. A character actor, his roles included the boat owner in "The Birds" and the hardware store clerk in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". How many people would realize that the niece of the guy renting Tippi Hedren the boat and trying to keep Sid Caesar and Edie Adams out of the store would have to battle a bloodthirsty alien and get possessed by an evil spirit trying to take over New York? So, this is not a cartoon that I recommend.I like to think about that. Walt Disney finances "Duck Pimples", and over seven decades later the niece of one of the cast members gets interviewed for Ron Howard's documentary about the Beatles' touring years. And last year's "Ghostbusters" was better than most people gave it credit for.

Duck Pimples (1945) *** (out of 4)Donald is listening to scary radio broadcasts, which soon has his mind working in overdrive as he finds himself terrified of everything that moves.DUCK PIMPLES isn't your typical Disney short because it seems like something that would have been made twenty years later by someone on an acid trip. If you watch enough movies then I'm sure you've came across that shorts from the 60s where people trip and before long they're seeing all sorts of bizarre images. That's basically what we've got here because Donald's imagination starts going nuts and he sees a rather weird subplot dealing with stolen jewels. The entire short just has a bizarre feel to it so it really stands out in regards to Disney and the type of shorts they were making during this period.

Virgil Partch, who signed his name 'ViP', was a magazine and newspaper cartoonist noted for his clean uncluttered linework and weirdly surrealistic humour. Although ViP was definitely an original, his subject matter is similar to that of Gahan Wilson, Arnold Roth and the great Basil Wolverton. The very first issue of Playboy magazine had two illustrations on its cover: a photo of Marilyn Monroe, and a drawing by ViP, with a caption stating that more ViP cartoons were inside. If it's good enough for Playboy, it's good enough for me.Oddly, the short Disney cartoon 'Duck Pimples' seems to be Virgil Partch's one and only foray into film animation ... odd, because it's a complete success which should have brought Partch similar job assignments. The credits of 'Duck Pimples' list Partch only as scriptwriter, but the characters in this cartoon (except for Donald Duck) show the clear influence of Partch's linework, and they don't resemble other Disney characters from this period. I'm positive that Partch must have drawn the model sheets for these characters, and he may well have drawn key poses for the characters as well. This is a fun cartoon that the whole family will enjoy: it has Disney's high production values, yet (despite the presence of Donald Duck) it isn't a typical Disney cartoon.The title 'Duck Pimples' is awkward: the opening title card bears the title 'Goose Pimples', with 'Goose' crossed out and 'Duck' written underneath. Either way, the title doesn't make much sense, because this cartoon doesn't have a scary theme. At the beginning, Donald Duck is alone in his house on a dark night, reading a spooky story. There's one very clever visual device, as Donald's armchair gradually morphs into a green monster underneath his body. Even small children will recognise that this is a symptom of Donald's imagination, not an actual event. But after this clever image, the cartoon veers away from scary themes into the wild surrealism typical of Partch's magazine cartoons. Even the story in Donald's book moves away from scary themes into whodunnit territory.The characters in Donald's story leap out of the book and start haranguing him. Among these is a police detective with an Irish brogue, his voice supplied (uncredited) by silent-film comedian and longtime voice artist Billy Bletcher. Also present is Pauline, a sexy female cartoon character who seems to be a prototype for Jessica Rabbit.The action is weird and fast-paced, more typical of Bob Clampett at Warners during this same period than anything Disney was doing at this time. But the violence in 'Duck Pimples' is negligible (which was seldom true of Clampett), and the whole film is delightful except for a very weak final gag. I'll rate 'Duck Pimples' 9 out of 10.