Studio: Terrytoons
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Produced by: Paul Terry
Short Synopsis
Gandy Goose and his friend Sourpuss the cat are prospectors riding through the desert at nightfall, looking for somewhere to stay. A ghostly vulture swoops down and eats their horse, leaving them stranded. They come to a deserted mining town and decide to hole up there for the night. The town turns out to be named for its occupants: it is full of ghosts. A skeleton is shooting pool in the empty saloon, a see-through cowboy ghost twirls a lasso, and the town's spectral residents begin to torment the two travellers. Gandy, cheerful and slow on the uptake, keeps missing what is going on, while Sourpuss sees everything and panics. The ghosts chase them through the empty buildings in a run of scare gags. How the two finally escape the town, or whether they do, is not described in any source this book could check.
Why It Matters
- The film plays the Halloween haunted-town formula with the sturdy, loose-limbed Terrytoons style, and the contrast between the oblivious goose and the terrified cat, a comedy pairing modelled on film double acts of the time, gives the scares their comic rhythm.
- Gandy Goose and Sourpuss were among Terrytoons' most-used characters in the 1940s, before Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle took over the studio's output. Films like this show the volume production behind Paul Terry's studio, where a large team of animators turned out a cartoon every couple of weeks for 20th Century Fox.
Notes and Trivia
- The credits list ten animators, an unusually long list that reflects Terrytoons' production-line method.
- Tom Morrison, one of the writers, also provided the voices.
- Gandy Goose's voice was modelled on the comedian Ed Wynn.
- See also: The Friendly Ghost (1945), Midnight (1930).