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6.3/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.3/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. The Chain Gang remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you have about seven minutes and want to see Mickey Mouse before he became a corporate logo, you should definitely watch this. It is worth it just to see how gritty they used to make these cartoons.
People who love hand-drawn animation history will dig it. If you only like the clean, safe Mickey from modern TV, you might find the prison setting a bit much.
The movie starts with these prisoners marching. It is all very rhythmic and clunky.
Mickey is just one of the guys in the chain gang. He looks small, even for a mouse, next to these massive guards.
The way they use their hammers to make music is pretty clever. Clink, clink, clonk.
It reminds me a bit of the energy in School's Out, which came out around the same time. Everything has a beat.
There is this one prisoner who looks like a hippo or maybe a very round dog. He plays the rocks like a xylophone.
I found myself tapping my foot. Then I remembered they are literally in a labor camp.
The best part is when the guards leave and the prisoners just start a jam session. Mickey pulls out a harmonica.
He gets so into it. His whole body stretches and squashes like it is made of rubber.
Wait, his ears stay in the same place even when his head turns. That always trips me out about early animation.
The music is actually good. You can tell Walt Disney and the team really cared about the sound sync.
It is way more lively than something like Beauty and the Beast which is obviously much later and more "perfect." This feels raw.
The guards come back and the fun stops. It felt like a real buzzkill.
A riot breaks out because... well, I am not really sure why. Everyone just starts running.
Mickey finds himself on the other side of the wall. He is running for his life.
He jumps on two horses. Not one, but two.
He rides them like he is water-skiing on land. It is completely ridiculous and I loved it.
The background keeps looping. You can see the same three trees over and over if you look closely.
The horses look like they are struggling. Their legs move in these weird circles.
Then come the bloodhounds. They are terrifying in a weird way.
They have these long, droopy faces and they bark right at the camera. Their eyes are just big white circles with black dots.
Apparently, this is where the idea for Pluto started. But these dogs aren't cute pets.
They look like they actually want to bite Mickey. It adds a bit of real tension that you don't get in later cartoons.
The animation on the dogs is a bit shaky. Sometimes their ears clip through their heads.
I noticed one dog just kind of slides across the grass without moving its legs for a second. It made me laugh.
Mickey ends up falling off a cliff. He just plummets.
He lands right back in the jail yard. It is kind of a dark joke if you think about it.
He can't escape his fate. The movie just ends with him looking defeated.
It is much shorter than I expected. But it packs a lot in.
I think I liked this more than the stuff where Mickey is a hero. Here he is just a guy trying to survive a bad day.
It feels more human despite him being a rodent. If that makes sense?
Anyway, go find it on YouTube or wherever. It is a trip.
"I've got the jailhouse blues, but at least I've got my harmonica." - Mickey, probably.
The shadows are also really interesting. They don't always match what the characters are doing.
There is a scene where a shadow just disappears. It's like the animator forgot to draw it for that frame.
These little mistakes make me like it more. It feels like people actually sat there and drew every single line by hand.
It’s a bit like A Romance of Happy Valley in terms of that old-school vibe, though obviously totally different genres.
So yeah. Mickey in prison. 10/10 for the weirdness factor alone.
IMDb —
1921
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