Under the Counter Spy

Under the Counter Spy
Title card
Directed by	Don Patterson
Produced by	Walter Lantz
Story by	Homer Brightman
Starring	Grace Stafford Dick Nelson Daws Butler
Animation by	Ray Abrams Herman Cohen Ken Southworth Joe Voght (assistant animator) (uncredited)
Backgrounds by	Raymond Jacobs Art Landy
Music by	Clarence Wheeler
Production company	Walter Lantz Productions
Distributed by	Universal Studios
Release date	May 10, 1954
Previous short	Dig That Dog
Next short	Hay Rube

Under the Counter Spy is the 54th animated cartoon short subject in the Woody Woodpecker series. Released theatrically on May 10, 1954, the film was produced by Walter Lantz Productions and distributed by Universal International.

Plot

Local police are warned of an escaped criminal spy named The Bat, who possesses a super-strength tonic called Formula 7 3/8—one drop of it gives power equal to 50,000 horsepower. While being actively pursued by the authorities, The Bat hides the tonic in the home of Woody Woodpecker, who is having a devil of a time waking up. When the listless woodpecker finally rolls out of bed, he accidentally drinks the tonic, giving him the strength of fifty men. Directed by an off-camera narrator to test this strength, Woody eventually crosses paths with the elusive Bat and captures him. Unfortunately, the tonic wears off just as Woody demonstrates to the police how he captured the Bat.

Characters

• Woody Woodpecker
• Thursday and Al
• The Bat
• Mama Woodpecker (shown in the picture)

Background music

The opera featured as a theme for Woody's first transformation is Richard Wagner's Lohengrin, which previously used in the first Walter Lantz cartoon Race Riot.

Gallery

Notes

• Under the Counter Spy is a parody of the television show Dragnet. The title is a pun on the work of a counterintelligence agent. The end of the short spoofs the Mark VII Limited production logo with the person accidentally striking his thumb with the hammer.
• Aside from a tired version of his trademark laugh (performed by Grace Stafford), Woody does not speak in this film. Instead, Dick Nelson (as the short's opening narrator) relays to the audience Woody's "thought dialogue." In a sense, this is the second time Nelson plays the woodpecker in the series, the first being 1943's Ration Bored. This also marks the first and only time Stafford did not provide any dialogue for Woody since 1952's Scalp Treatment.
  • However, in the TV version for The Woody Woodpecker Show (in the episode, Spook-A-Nanny) Grace Stafford does provide additional inner dialogue for Woody while reading the signs leading to the B.F.I. ("This is a spooky place for the B.F.I. Headquarters!") The same also applies to the Portuguese dub.
• The short opens with a disclaimer that parodies Dragnet's standard disclaimer:

The story you are about to see is a big fat lie.
No names have been changed to protect anybody!

• The story carries a lot of likeness to the Carl Barks Donald Duck comic Super Snooper (1949). In both stories, the main character (Donald and Woody) mistakes a secret potion for his medicine and gains superhuman powers. And in both stories, no one believes them when they claim that they're super-strong and both Donald and Woody hurt themselves in the end when they try to prove their powers.
• This is the first Lantz cartoon to feature the voice of Daws Butler.

Video

• Woody Woodpecker - Under the Counter Spy (on Dailymotion)
• Woody Woodpecker - Under the Counter Spy (on b98.tv)

References

• Cooke, Jon, Komorowski, Thad, Shakarian, Pietro, and Tatay, Jack. "1954". The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia.