Studio: Walter Lantz Productions
Distributor: Universal-International
Produced by: Walter Lantz
Short Synopsis
Detailed plot accounts of this 1960 Woody short are scarce, and this summary is drawn from the surviving film. The story is set around a tall white clock tower and a grand house. In a luxurious room with velvet curtains, an elderly gentleman with a white moustache dozes peacefully on a chaise longue, and a sly, hook-nosed character in a red waistcoat and dark jacket is up to no good. Woody Woodpecker gets caught up in the plot: the villain grabs him and lectures him, finger raised, in his salon. The title refers to the clock tower's belfry, home to bats, and the old saying about someone with "bats in the belfry", someone who is not quite right in the head, and the action builds around the tower and its bell. The exact course of the story is not described in any source this book could check.
Why It Matters
- By 1960 Lantz's cartoons were made on tight budgets, with simplified animation, but Paul J. Smith's films keep a lively, colourful look, with stylised architecture and flat colour, and Grace Stafford's Woody remains energetic and mischievous.
- It comes from the years after The Woody Woodpecker Show began on television in 1957. Lantz kept making theatrical Woody shorts until 1972, but from this point most viewers met them on the small screen, and the films were built to play well in both places.
Notes and Trivia
- Paul Frees, one of the busiest voice actors of the era, provides the other voices.
- It was the 101st Woody Woodpecker cartoon.
- See also: To Catch a Woodpecker (1957).