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7.6/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 7.6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Teacher's Pests remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have seven minutes to spare and love rubbery, black-and-white chaos, Teacher's Pests is absolutely worth a quick look on YouTube. Anyone obsessed with early animation history will find it charmingly weird, but if you hate repetitive jazz loops and characters whose limbs stretch like warm mozzarella, you will probably want to skip this one. 🐮
It’s a 1931 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short, back when cartoons didn't really worry about plot and mostly just wanted to make you dizzy. The whole thing is set in a schoolhouse run by this giant, incredibly stressed-out cow teacher.
I swear, the way her udders swing like a grandfather clock's pendulum whenever she gets mad is the kind of bizarre pre-code detail you just don't see anymore. It is oddly hypnotic and a little uncomfortable if you think about it too much.
Oswald himself is a bit of a jerk here, which I actually prefer to his later, sweeter Mickey-mouse clone era. He rolls into class late, immediately starts causing trouble, and has this ridiculously smug look on his face.
There’s a gag where he uses a ruler to launch a spitball, and the camera follows the spitball in this first-person POV shot that actually felt pretty advanced for 1931. Or maybe I am just easily impressed by old ink-and-paint tricks.
The classroom is filled with other random animal kids who look like they were drawn in about five seconds. One kid, some sort of hippo or pig, just keeps eating his own desk.
No explanation is given, he just chews on the wood. It reminded me a bit of the weird, low-stakes stupidity you find in The Sap, where the comedy comes from everyone just acting slightly off.
You really have to prepare yourself for the audio track. It’s that early talkie tinny sound where every desk scrape and chalk squeak sounds like a dentist drill.
The music is this relentless, looping hot jazz that honestly sounds like the band was recording in a tiled bathroom. It never stops, not even for a single second.
When the cow teacher starts yelling, it’s just this garbled slide-trombone noise that made my dog tilt his head in genuine concern. There is also a weirdly dark moment where a cat character gets his tail caught in a inkwell.
He doesn't just cry, he literally melts into a puddle of black ink. It’s the kind of casual body horror that early animators like Tex Avery did before the censors cleaned everything up.
Speaking of Avery, you can already feel his chaotic energy starting to bubble up in the background of this thing, even if he was just an animator here. It doesn't have the grand historical weight of something like The Virgin Queen, obviously, but as a time capsule, it’s gold.
If you've seen other shorts from this era, like The Fable of Fearless Fido, you know exactly what kind of loose, dream-logic structure to expect. It’s not a masterpiece, and honestly, the constant screeching might give you a mild headache if you wear headphones.
But as a slice of pure, unfiltered 1930s weirdness, it’s a fun little detour. Just don't expect it to make any sense.
IMDb —
1915
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