Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Seymour Kneitel, Isadore Sparber
Short Synopsis
Popeye has just finished building himself a wooden house and stands back to admire it. A column of termites marches in, and the house begins to disappear: the insects eat through the porch, the walls, the furniture and the stairs with the sound of a buzz-saw, while Popeye swats, sprays, stamps and chases them. Everything he tries makes it worse; the termites eat his tools, his weapons and the ladder he is standing on, and they finish the house down to the nails, leaving him standing on a bare plot. Popeye eats his spinach, builds a new house entirely of steel in a matter of seconds, and sits down in triumph. The termites return, eat their way through the steel as easily as the wood, and the film ends with the sailor beaten.
Why It Matters
- It is a rare Popeye cartoon in which the spinach does not win: the termites eat the steel house too, and the ending leaves Popeye defeated, which almost never happened in the series. The termite animation, with the house vanishing in neat bites and the sawing sound effect, is the cartoon's engine.
- Insect to Injury is the only Popeye cartoon directed by Dave Tendlar, a veteran Fleischer animator who had directed Casper and Herman and Katnip, and it closed the 1955-56 season. It is in the public domain in the United States, its copyright never renewed.
Notes and Trivia
- Neither Olive nor Bluto appears; the film is a Popeye solo in the manner of Shuteye Popeye.
- The title puns on "insult to injury".
- See also: Shuteye Popeye (1952), Cookin' with Gags (1955), Spree Lunch (1957).
