Pantry Panic (1941)
Ignoring a groundhog's storm warning, Woody Woodpecker stays behind while his neighbors fly south, only to be caught starving through a brutal winter and forced into an alliance with a hungry stray cat.
Only the third Woody Woodpecker cartoon ever made, Pantry Panic still shows the character in his manic, saucer-eyed original design, years before Walter Lantz’s studio softened him for mass appeal; thanks to a lapsed copyright, it also happens to be the only Woody short in the public domain.
Background
Pantry Panic was the third Woody Woodpecker cartoon ever made, directed by Walter Lantz and released November 24, 1941, from a story by Ben Hardaway and L.E. Elliott with music by Darrell Calker. It still shows Woody in his original character design, manic and saucer-eyed, well before Lantz’s studio reworked him into the more conventionally cute bird audiences later associated with the character. It is also, thanks to a lapsed copyright, the only Woody Woodpecker short in the public domain.
What to watch for
A groundhog’s storm warning sends every other bird south, but Woody insists on finishing his swim, and winter arrives hard enough to freeze the swimming hole solid around him mid-dive; two weeks later he is visibly starving, personified in one sequence by a figure resembling the Grim Reaper, and forced into an uneasy, mutually suspicious alliance with an equally hungry stray cat. This is one of the few early Woody shorts where the character never says his catchphrase “Guess Who?” during the opening titles, even though his signature manic laugh is still present throughout; the gag-driven survival plot and the rougher, more aggressive version of Woody on display make an interesting contrast with his later, tamer persona.
