THREE LITTLE WOLVES (1936)
Article 5356 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-28-2017
Directed by David Hand
Featuring the voices of Billy Bletcher, Pinto Colvig, Dorothy Compton
Country: USA
What it is: Disney Silly Symphony

The Big Bad Wolf and his three sons hatch a plot to catch the pigs by pretending to be Little Bo Peep and her sheep.

Lest we forget, one of Disney’s most famous shorts was THE THREE LITTLE PIGS, and I was rather surprised to find they also did one called the above title. I was hoping for an inversion of the original cartoon (with the pigs as the villains and the wolves as the victims), but this turns out to be more of a straightforward sequel which references the original by reprising the song. It borrows from a couple of other sources as well; you’ve seen the Bo Peep reference in the plot description, and the general plot owes quite a bit to the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!”. Like most sequels, it’s not the equal to the original, but it does have two highlights. One is the use of an elaborate machine called a “Wolf Pacifier”. The other is one of the rare times where Disney throws out a joke that totally blindsides me; it’s how the pigs react when the wolf (in his Bo Peep costume) locks them in his house and swallows the key. It’s actually a pretty risque joke for a post-code cartoon.