Porky's Romance: A cartoon nightmare in disguise

Is this actually a horror movie?

If you like your cartoons to have a dash of existential dread mixed into the slapstick, you’ll probably find Porky’s Romance pretty interesting. People who want a straightforward, sweet romantic story will definitely hate this. It’s not exactly the kind of thing you show someone who thinks animation is just for soothing the kids.

Porky is basically a nervous wreck here. He’s trying to court Petunia, and the way he stutters through his feelings feels genuinely frantic. It’s not just a bit; the poor guy is vibrating with anxiety.

Then we get to the fantasy sequence. This is where the whole thing just goes off the rails in the best way possible. It’s like a fever dream of what a 1930s middle-class marriage looked like to a terrified pig.

The joy of household chaos

Porky imagines a house overflowing with dozens of identical, screaming piglets. It’s overwhelming. They’re running everywhere, breaking stuff, and just being total agents of entropy. You can feel his panic rising as the house literally shrinks around him.

The pacing here is wild. It goes from a quiet, nervous confession of love to absolute cacophony in seconds. It reminds me a bit of the frantic energy in A One Cylinder Love Riot, where everything just sort of spirals out of control because the characters can't stop moving.

• The design of the piglets is almost creepy.
• Petunia’s face when she’s annoyed is gold.
• The music timing is so sharp it’s almost aggressive.

There's this one moment where Porky is trying to eat dinner while the kids are absolute lunatics, and his expression is just... blank. He's checked out. It’s a brutal little observation about parenthood that I didn't expect from a 1937 short.

I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece or anything, but it’s definitely not boring. It’s got a weird, jagged edge to it. Much sharper than the stuff you see in Whirlpool, which feels like it’s trying to be a bit more composed.

Honestly, just watch it for the animation of the chaos. It’s a total mess, but it’s a controlled mess. 🐷✨