Studio: Warner Bros. Cartoons (Leon Schlesinger Productions), for the First Motion Picture Unit, US Army Air Forces
Distributor: US Army (Army-Navy Screen Magazine)
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger (uncredited)
Short Synopsis
Snafu's unit enters a deserted desert town that the retreating enemy has filled with booby traps, and the narrator warns him to touch nothing. Snafu touches everything. A harem palace lures him in with a sign and a painted dancing girl; the "girls" are explosives, the cushions are mined, and every object he picks up is wired. A piano stands in the corner, and a sign warns that a certain key is the detonator; Snafu sits down and plays "Those Endearing Young Charms", getting the tune wrong every time and so missing the fatal note, until, pleased with himself, he leans back, drops a cigarette on a fuse and blows himself to Heaven. There, among the clouds, he finds a piano, plays the tune correctly at last, and is blown up again.
Why It Matters
- The piano gag is one of the best Clampett ever staged, the whole film held on whether Snafu will hit the right note, and the double explosion ending is pure Snafu, a soldier who learns nothing even in Heaven. The desert town, with its leering painted houris and wired cushions, is Clampett's rubbery style let loose for an adult audience.
- "Those Endearing Young Charms" played on a booby-trapped piano became a Warner running gag, reused in Ballot Box Bunny and in the Road Runner cartoons, and this is where it started. The Snafu films, works of the US government, are all in the public domain, and Booby Traps is the most-seen of them.
Notes and Trivia
- The lesson, that booby traps are designed to appeal to curiosity and greed, was a real training point in 1944.
- Clampett directed four Snafu cartoons in all.
- See also: Spies (Private Snafu, 1943), The Home Front (Private Snafu, 1943), Fast and Furry-ous (1949).
