Billy Bletcher

A boy and his dog romp through a Technicolor musical fantasy extolling the joys of pet ownership, originally produced as a sponsored short for Ipana Toothpaste. Walter Lantz directed this Castle Films home-movie perennial. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy · Family

Private Snafu tosses away his gas mask, confident that poison gas will never reach him, until a surreal gas attack proves him catastrophically wrong. A Chuck Jones-directed Private Snafu training short with a Bugs Bunny cameo. The film entered the public domain as a U.S. government work.

Animation · Comedy · War

A young parrot insists he wants to be a sailor despite his parents' protests, setting sail in a washtub with predictably stormy results. A Tex Avery-directed Merrie Melodies short. The film entered the public domain through non-renewal.

Animation · Comedy

Private Snafu vs. Malaria Mike is a 1944 Private Snafu cartoon directed by Chuck Jones for Leon Schlesinger Productions, produced for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Snafu is stationed in a jungle where a malaria-carrying mosquito named Malaria Mike targets him as his next victim. The cartoon was part of a series of instructional films designed to teach soldiers about malaria prevention in tropical theaters. As a U.S. government work, the film is in the public domain.

Animation · War · Comedy

Meet John Doughboy is a 1941 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Bob Clampett for Leon Schlesinger Productions, featuring Porky Pig. Porky tours a military training camp and observes the preparations of the "Doughboys" — American soldiers — as they train for service. The short was part of a wave of patriotic cartoons produced before the United States entered World War II. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy

Saps in Chaps is a 1942 Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Friz Freleng for Leon Schlesinger Productions. A Western-themed gag cartoon featuring sagebrush sight gags and wild west wackiness, with horses, cowboys, and desert humor. The short was the last black-and-white Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Freleng. The film is in the public domain.

Animation · Comedy · Western

Boris Karloff plays Dr. Bernard Adrian, a gentle small-town physician still grieving his wife and daughter's deaths from polio, now experimenting with spinal fluid to cure a paralyzed young woman. When a vicious circus ape escapes and is shot, Adrian sees a grim shortcut to the human material he needs — and the killings that follow are blamed on the ape itself. A Monogram horror cheapie that gives Karloff an unusually sympathetic mad scientist. The film is in the public domain.

Horror · Mystery