Boom Boom (1936) review - early Porky Pig is wonderfully weird

Honestly, you only need to watch Boom Boom if you are a total nerd for early Warner Bros. cartoons or just have seven minutes to kill while waiting for your laundry to dry. 🧺

Anyone expecting a modern, polished Porky Pig is going to be incredibly confused, maybe even a little annoyed. But if you love weird, chaotic black-and-white slapstick, this is a goldmine. 💣

This is basically a series of World War I gag sketches loosely held together by a thin string. It doesn't even feel like a real movie, more like a notebook of ideas someone scribbled down during a fever dream.

Like, within the first two minutes, a soldier literally throws the grenade pin, gets blown sky-high, and gets caught in a net by an ambulance. It is so stupidly fast, you might miss it if you blink.

Then we get Porky Pig—who sounds totally different here because it's Joe Dougherty voicing him with an actual, unpolished stutter—leading a charge. But he has absolutely no support, so he just nopes out and runs back to dive under Beans the Cat's bunk. 🛏️

I love how cowardly he is here. It is way more relatable than the brave hero stuff.

Speaking of weird things, the "smart bullets" in this cartoon are wild. They literally stop in mid-air, look around, and chase people around corners like heat-seeking missiles. 🎯

It's this kind of surrealism that makes early animation so fun. If you want something with actual dramatic weight or a real story, go watch The Peach Girl instead because you won't find any of that here.

The whole climax is just Porky and Beans riding a motorcycle with a sidecar, trying to rescue some guy named General Hardtack. 🏍️

There is a moment where they fly a plane and immediately get shot down, only to end up wrapped in bandages in a hospital. The end. Just like that.

It is so abrupt it actually made me laugh out loud. The pacing is just relentless.

A few random things I noticed:

• The machine gunner with the jitters is a mood. Honestly.
• The pigeon carrying the message literally just drops in out of nowhere. No setup.
• Porky's stutter in this is so heavy it almost halts the cartoon's momentum, but in a funny way.

It is definitely not a masterpiece. But it have this raw, unhinged energy that modern corporate cartoons completely lack. 💥