Donald's Snow Fight
Donald's Snow Fight | |
---|---|
Directed by | Jack King |
Produced by | Walt Disney |
Story by |
Carl Barks Harry Reeves |
Music by | Oliver Wallace |
Animation by |
Lee J. Ames Jim Armstrong Walt Clinton Jack Hannah Hal King Ed Love Lee Morehouse Ray Patin Retta Scott Don Towsley Judge Whitaker |
Layouts by | Bill Herwig |
Studio | Walt Disney Productions |
Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
Release date(s) | April 10, 1942 |
Running time | 7 minutes |
Language | English |
Preceded by | The New Spirit |
Followed by | Donald Gets Drafted |
Donald's Snow Fight is an animated short film featuring classic cartoon character Donald Duck in a civil war-esque snowball fight with his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie. It was released in 1942 by Walt Disney Productions and is also known as Snowball Wars.
Plot
The short begins with Donald wiping the fog off his glass door, excited to see the snow. Donald says that he is excited about snow. He opens his door and soon gets his bill frozen from the cold. He gets a fur overcoat and pulls a sled, while singing Jingle Bells. When Donald reaches the top of the hill, he notices his nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, at the bottom, building a snowman, while singing For He's a Jolly Good Fellow. Tempted, Donald crashes his sled into their snowman and thus his nephews, resulting each of them to "wear" a part of their snowman. While Donald is laughing himself silly, Huey, Dewey, and Louie plot revenge.
The next scene shows Donald's nephews piling snow and a duck-like head on a boulder. Donald is scraping snow off of his foot when he hears his nephews yelling, "That's Uncle Donald! That's Uncle Donald! That's Uncle Donald!", while standing by the degrading snowman of Donald. "Oh, yeah?!" Donald replies, and he shortly crashes himself into the snowman-disguised boulder. The shockwaves from the crash shake off all of the furs on his overcoat, save for one, that Donald touches with his finger to stop its shaking and pulls out.
Now Donald's nephews are laughing themselves silly and Donald pulls off the remains of his overcoat. He dashes off to start chasing them. Donald runs so fast, that he blows the snow off of a kissing couple. The nephews dash across a frozen pond to the center, where an imposing fortress made of ice and snow stands. Donald bounces off the mattress door that they throw up, causing him to ricochet across the ice (making a laser noise for each bounce) and crashing into a tree. Snow piles on top of him (with icicles around him) until he is "transformed" into a rhinoceros in a cage. As a victory song, the trio sings a verse of London Bridge while spinning and jumping in a circle.
Donald bursts out of the cage, squawking angrily, and declares war on his nephews. Later on, Donald yells at his nephews from a snow battleship, that he created, while his nephews simply mock him from their snow fortress. Donald starts a small barrage of snowballs, which results the nephews into becoming like bowling pins, waiting for Donald to strike them out. Donald then pulls out a bucket of water, dips a snow chunk in it, and creates an ice ammunition (called "Big Bertha" by Donald.) He launches it and it splits his nephews' flagpole in three spots, "spanking" all three of them.
Donald asks soon after if they surrender, and they clearly refuse. They start creating snow chunks of their own, while also getting three other objects: a picnic basket, some rope, and some mouse traps. They place the mouse traps in rocket-shaped components and stick them in the picnic basket now with the string tied to it. Huey, Dewey, and Louie soon launch the basket and release the missiles, with Donald getting hit by several of them. With Huey commanding them with a wooden sword, Louie and Dewey started launching snowballs from a catapult. Donald gets his hat spun off his head and yells, "That's unconstitutional!" before getting more snowballs launched at him. As his barrier starts shrinking with each hit, Donald looks up, gets smacked in the face, and is launched him into a smaller part of the ship.
Being the little cheaters that they are, the nephews spear hot coal onto arrows (albeit while singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic) and launch them into the area where Donald currently is, creating a skull-like structure. As a final attack, they launch a flaming snowball into a part of Donald's ship. This leads Donald to scream at them "I'll exterminate you!" This causes the ship to start melting and end up with Donald frozen in a palm tree-shaped Prison of ice. To celebrate their victory, the triplets perform a (stereotypical) ceremonious Native American dance around the icicle; this latter performance was edited out of later broadcasts of the clip, due to perceived political incorrectness.
This short was featured as part of the edited collection, Donald and His Duckling Gang, from 1979, and is featured in From All of Us to All of You which is shown on TV every Christmas in the Scandinavian countries. This short was one of the many featured in Donald Duck's 50th Birthday