Director(s): Bob Clampett (credited as “Robert Clampett”)
Summary: Porky Pig, who, in this short, lives in the Arctic and frolics with the wildlife (which, yes, does include Antarctic animals. That’s just how it was until we had people who could actually look online and find which animals are Arctic and which aren’t)...until a fur trapper named I. Killem appears and goes on a spree to have all of Porky’s animal friends killed and turned into coats and hunting trophies. That’s pretty dark for something that plays out like one of those thinly-plotted 1930s cartoons that were a flimsy excuse to advertise music in the studio library, but, hey, it was a different time.
Fun Facts:
- The $4.98 for the coats that I. Killem imagines the seals as would be $113.71 in 2026 money. That’s...actually not that bad of a price (only because $4.98 makes the coats look cheap. $113.71 makes me think, “Yeah, that sounds about right for seal coats”), but you know people will still complain because of animal cruelty.
Because the “Fun Facts” is a bit light this time around, I want to introduce a new segment that I might make regular the more I keep up with this (and because the last entry also had this) called, “Letterboxd Says The Darndest Things,” where I find the most...“interesting” (for lack of a better word) Letterboxd review and add in my two cents, equal parts agreeing with its sentiment or countering with my take on it.
Today’s entry comes from Tim Brayton, who gave this cartoon two-and-a-half stars, and had this to say about the short:
I failed to note when posting about “Kristopher Kolumbus Jr” that it was the kick-off to an eight-month period of 1939 during which the Bob Clampett unit was the only team at Schlesinger’s making black-and-white Looney Tunes with Porky Pig, while the [Tex] Avery, [Chuck] Jones, and [Ben] Hardaway/[Cal] Dalton units were exclusively focused on Technicolor Merrie Melodies. It’s exceedingly tempting to speculate that this is related to the sudden explosion of evident contempt Clampett had for his job: we’re in a run of just crushingly mediocre Clampett cartoons, and “Polar Pals” feels almost even more bored with itself than “Kristopher Kolumbus Jr.” That cartoon sucked, but at least it had some weird touches and a general mood of “fuck you” superiority. This [“Polar Pals”] just feels like somebody attempting to make the most generic possible musical 1930s cartoon, starting from a dismal, droning pop song about Eskimo kisses performed by a super generic woman’s group. And then it goes into a series of competently executed, deeply unimaginative physical comedy gags about polar animals (both poles, but that’s to be expected) dealing with how everything is made of ice. The standout moment, which is not to say the highlight, is obviously when Porky not only strips nude to take an ice shower (Mel Blanc’s stutter on “Singin’ In The Bathub” is charming), but when drying his ass afterwards, shimmies his junk right at the camera. Otherwise, it's mostly fine, but boring to watch, and it feels like it was boring to come up with it, and it’s not remotely a coincidence that this is our first Looney Tune in a while that only barely manages to pass the 6-minute mark.
Things I Agree With Him About This Short: Porky stutter-singing “Singin’ in the Bathtub” is charming/funny.
Things I Will Meet Tim Halfway About This Short: Yeah, the musical number does feel a bit tedious and Bob Clampett’s Porky cartoon track record after “Porky in Wackyland” wasn’t all that great, but the short is worth it for I. Killem attacking the animals, the animals fighting back, and the end where Porky drops through the ice and gets frozen. That has more of a “fuck you” sentiment than whatever “Kristopher Kolumbus, Jr.” had (though I’m probably wrong on that, since I’ve never seen “Kristopher Kolumbus, Jr.” It’s one of those shorts that wasn’t on TV because it was too racially insensitive to air, even with edits. I can easily find it online now and see for myself, but that can wait for another day...or a full-on blog where I go through all 1000 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts with my skewed and fractured take on what I’m seeing) since this is when Bob Clampett was using Porky more out of contractual obligation rather than a geniune love for the character or interest in expanding his personality or roles.
Things I Don’t Agree With About This Short:
- Tim lost me on “...when drying his ass afterwards, shimmies his junk right at the camera...” Why’d you have to word it like that? Plus, this is Bob Clampett we’re talking about. Like Tex Avery and (on occasion) Frank Tashlin, Clampett liked to put in questionable gags just to see if the Hays Code/studio censors take notice. “An Itch in Time” is Clampett’s best example.
- I personally think the short’s stand-out moment is when I. Killem attacks the animals. That’s probably the best black humor a WB cartoon had in the days before Chuck Jones put out funnier shorts, even if it feels like something Tex Avery would have done (at least at MGM. Not so much Termite Terrace).
- Porky’s reflection on the ice wall as he’s dancing is also a stand-out in this short, if only because that’s the part I remember most from my days of seeing it as a child (well, teenager, since I don’t really remember seeing this on any channel but Cartoon Network).
- This short is six minutes and 32 seconds. I’d say it does past the six-minute mark...unless Tim was watching the edited version, which I will get to...right now.
The Channel(s): Nickelodeon (Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon [no word on whether it’s the Nick at Nite version or the daytime version. I’m going to assume it’s both])
Part(s) Edited: Two scenes of gun violence during I. Killem’s rampage to turn Porky’s polar pals (title drop!) into furs and trophies:
- The penguin running from the machine gun fire and watching in horror as his shadow gets shot and melodramatically dies.
- A drunken walrus getting riddled with gunfire, but not being affected by it. The walrus laughs, hiccups, declares, “Ya never even touched me!”, downs his booze, and watches (without reacting in pain) as his stomach becomes a cartoon sprinkler, thanks to the alcohol leaking out of his bullet wounds.
What Grinds My Gears About the Edit(s): Since the cartoon has been declared one of Bob Clampett’s lesser works in his black and white Porky Pig filmography, then taking away the only truly funny scenes in the short does kill the vibe somewhat. What I don’t get is the fact that why wasn’t the scene of the polar bears, seals, and mooses armed with rifles getting blasted into looking like the study parlor of a great white hunter’s (read: animal trophy heads and rifles on the wall and a bearskin rug near a roaring fireplace) mansion (or hunting clubhouse, where he and others like him gather to drink and discuss their adventures) cut? Was it too cartoony to be considered violent? If that’s true, why was the drunk walrus being turned into a sprinkler cut? That’s the cartooniest gag I know in my years of watching classic shorts for both fun and knowing the ins and outs of comedy (both animated and live-action). It can’t be because the walrus was a drunk. If you can believe it, Nickelodeon actually left in tobacco and alcohol references in their shorts, but cut out pill-popping (I know “Beep Beep!”, “Stop! Look! And Hasten!” and “Mexican Boarders” have been cut for that, but “The Last Hungry Cat” wasn’t). Oh, 1990s Nickelodeon...
Video Comparison (I am fully aware that Nickelodeon probably did all their edits on a computer-colorized version. Recreating the edits on a black and white copy is for demonstration only. Plus, I didn't think to download a computer-colorized version until just now):
You got Bugs Bunny allegedly looking at a map, when his eye line seems to be in the direction of watching Penelope the cat once again trying to escape the amorous embrace of Pepe Le Pew [who has the same sheik headdress as the one from “Little Beau Pepe,” and, despite how easy it could have been, doesn’t look like Yosemite Sam’s]; you have Gogo Dodo behind Bugs, but no Porky Pig in sight; you have Sylvester glaring at the Hungarian dancing mouse from “Mouse Mazurka,” but there’s no Tweety in sight; you have a sad-looking Playboy Penguin from “Frigid Hare” and “8 Ball Bunny,” and you have Yosemite Sam as his sheik self from “Sahara Hare” looking pissed as he sticks his head through the ship’s porthole. It’s funny for being so bad, in my opinion.
Thirteen years later, “Polar Pals” is on the fifth and penultimate volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set (on the fourth disc, which features rarely seen black-and-white cartoons from the 1930s and early 1940s, though I must protest, because some of them have been seen on television and have had parts cut). Ten years after that, the short was released on the Porky Pig 101 DVD (third disc), which features 101 Porky Pig cartoons (a lot of which are the ones that have either been banned from airing on American TV or edited to remove problematic content before airing on American TV).
Is/Was It on Streaming or Digital Download: It was available on HBO Max (both when it started out as HBO Max and when it was called Max), but now it’s on Tubi. As of this writing, it’s unavailable for digital download.
‘Til next time: Stay Looney and Be Merrie!
