The Spider and the Fly

1931
6.3| 0h7m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 15 October 1931 Released
Producted By: Columbia Pictures
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Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

A kitchen is filled with houseflies. A spider wakes up and plays his web like a harp, attracting a pair of them; the female is trapped, and the male summons the cavalry, which arrives riding horseflies, riding dragonflies to drop pepper bombs, firing champagne bottles, and ultimately setting the web on fire and catching the spider on flypaper when he falls.

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Reviews

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film
Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Staci Frederick Blistering performances.
OllieSuave-007 This is one of those sappy Silly Symphony cartoons featuring good-two-shoes characters going about their lives and banning together to defeat an adversity - in this case, a bunch of flies trying to rescue a damsel-in-distress from a spider. A very predictable cartoon with no laughs and entertainment value. Grade D--
Robert Reynolds This is an early short in the Silly Symphonies series produced by Disney. There will be spoilers ahead:There's minimal plot to this one, which is par for the course with the early Silly Symphonies. This opens with a great opening shot on a whole flock of house flies enjoying themselves. A couple of flies are clearly enraptured with each other.The couple are enjoying themselves. Enter the bad guy, er, spider, from behind a poison bottle. It goes up to his web and begins playing it like a harp, to try to attract something. The couple comes nearer and begin dancing, the girl spinning off and into the web.The cartoon now becomes action-oriented, with the boy fly trying to free his companion, barely avoiding capture. Then, he calls out reinforcements-other house flies, horse flies and so on. It looks like a battle during World War I, with the rest of the insect kingdom ganging up on the fly. It's all very well animated and there's a happy ending (it is, after all, a Disney cartoon).This short is available on the Disney Treasures More Silly Symphonies DVD set and this short and the set are well worth finding. Recommended.
MartinHafer This is one of many black & white cartoons made by the Disney company that were marketed under their Silly Symphonies trademark. These films were true to their name and featured music--and the characters all moved about to the songs. In this case, you have a lot of cute bugs infesting a home and a nasty spider who is out to do evil...that is after he stops to play the web-harp. Once finished, he is eager to catch a cute bee for some cross-species romance (ick!) or to kill and eat her--you really don't get to find out which is the case. That's because the bees and all their other bug friends come to the rescue--delivering a healthy dose of comeuppance! All in all, an enjoyable little romp.By the way, note that the spider has six legs. This was probably done just to make animating him easier. Also, I liked the horseflies--see them and see what I mean.
Ron Oliver A Walt Disney SILLY SYMPHONY Cartoon Short.It's showdown time for THE SPIDER AND THE FLY when the ugly arachnid attacks a pair of insect lovers...Good versus Evil in this early black & white cartoon. The Spider is one of the first Disney characters to show a hint of all the wonderfully wicked villains to come from the Studio in later years. Clever opening, with the swarm of flies frolicking on the upside down ceiling.The SILLY SYMPHONIES, which Walt Disney produced for a ten year period beginning in 1929, are among the most interesting of series in the field of animation. Unlike the Mickey Mouse cartoons in which action was paramount, with the Symphonies the action was made to fit the music. There was little plot in the early Symphonies, which featured lively inanimate objects and anthropomorphic plants & animals, all moving frantically to the soundtrack. Gradually, however, the Symphonies became the school where Walt's animators learned to work with color and began to experiment with plot, characterization & photographic special effects. The pages of Fable & Fairy Tale, Myth & Mother Goose were all mined to provide story lines and even Hollywood's musicals & celebrities were effectively spoofed. It was from this rich soil that Disney's feature-length animation was to spring. In 1939, with SNOW WHITE successfully behind him and PINOCCHIO & FANTASIA on the near horizon, Walt phased out the SILLY SYMPHONIES; they had run their course & served their purpose.