Alice in the Wooly West

In this 1926 relic of the 'Alice Comedies' era, the boundaries between ink and reality are blurred with a reckless, silent-era abandon. Julius the Cat, a character who essentially served as the prototype for the more famous mouse to come, takes center stage as a lasso-swinging cowboy. While he demonstrates his prowess with rope tricks, a stagecoach carrying the young Alice (Margie Gay) is intercepted by a gang of animated outlaws. The stakes escalate when Alice is pinned between a cactus and a leering bandit, prompting a high-speed rescue from our feline hero. The climax unfolds atop a precarious rock formation, leading to a surreal sequence of hide-and-seek among boulders where Julius literally sheds his own skin to outwit his opponent. It is a Western reimagined through the lens of early rubber-hose physics, concluding with a bashful display of modesty that serves as a bizarrely humanizing beat for a cartoon cat.