Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike (1944)
Private Snafu skips his mosquito netting, repellent, and atabrine tablets, giving a relentless mosquito named Malaria Mike every opening he needs — with fatally comic results once Snafu drops his guard for a photo of his girl.
Directed by Chuck Jones, Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike was part of a real 1943–44 Army campaign against malaria in the Pacific, where the disease sidelined far more troops than combat did, aimed at getting soldiers to actually use their anti-malaria gear.
Background
Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike is a 1944 entry in the Private Snafu training-film series, directed by Chuck Jones and written in part by Dr. Seuss, produced by Leon Schlesinger for the US Army. It was part of a real 1943-44 Army campaign against malaria in the Pacific theater, where the disease was sidelining far more soldiers than enemy action was. The film opens on a wanted poster for Malaria Mike, an anthropomorphic mosquito who admires his own likeness before setting his sights on Snafu.
What to watch for
Snafu ignores the basic precautions the film is meant to teach — mosquito netting, repellent, and his atabrine tablets — treating each piece of gear as an annoyance rather than protection. The mosquito needs only one opening, which Snafu hands him by lowering his guard to admire a photo of his girl back home, and the short follows the series’ house style of punishing its hapless hero’s negligence for comic effect rather than simply lecturing the audience. The tone stays light, but the underlying statistics about malaria’s toll on Pacific troops were genuine.
