Since this is probably one of the shortest things I'll ever be reviewing, I'm not even sure if this is going to satisfy the character limit. I found this film on the internet (when I wasn't trying to) a few days ago, and I've been thinking about it ever since. It's really strange, and has kind of stunning animation for something almost a century old. The short was directed by Harold Muller and features a shoe wearing bird resembling a pterodactyl who happens to be able to eat metal with no ill effects. Before we get to that, the short shows a guy named Charley Chucklehead (Charles Bowers), who has a job working at a junkyard. One day, he finds out about a bird native to Africa which lives under rocks, eats metal, and can only be lured out by playing music. Charley travels to the Belgian Congo with a band brandishing brass instruments. After they play, he discovers a talking worm under a rock. The worm has a Brooklyn accent and Charley dunks him in silver paint in order to give him a metallic look. This allows him to be used as bait to lure the nearby metal eating bird out of hiding. With the worm's help, Charley manages to get the bird back to New York, where it devours a car and hatches an egg for him. The egg turns into another car, and when Charley suggests they open a factory together, the bird laughs, saying they only lay one egg every 100 years. I have no comment. All I can say is that people in the 30s really had a different level of patience and insanity in order to animate something like this. Even though this short is ridiculous, I think it's still worth taking a look at if you're an animation fan, because the animations on the worm and bird still hold up. There's an amusing section where the two fight with each other as the worm tries to get the bird to New York. Because this short has little else to comment on besides the impressive animation of the two creatures, I feel that's about all I have to say. I'm just going to eagerly await the next time the bird lays an egg, which (according to the short), will be in 2030. We can only hope.
Review of It's a Bird
