Taking part in a poll on ICM for the best movies of 1927 I decided to look at shorts from the year. Learning of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from taking part in other polls,I was very lucky to find a 1927 title of this rabbit.The plot:Rolling out of bed angry,Oswald decides to take his anger out on the mechanical cow sleeping in the next bed. Dragging the cow round town to give milk to the customers,Oswald's day turns sour,when thugs kidnap his girlfriend. View on the film:For only being the third Oswald movie made,director Walt Disney gives the animation a superb fluid quality,with the chase scenes being smooth and the characters being cleanly detailed. For the script,Disney dips into the in-vogue surreal transformation scenes,with playful,off the wall sight-gags on Oswald changing the parts of the cow making this short a delight.

In THE MECHANICAL COW, Oswald has a robotic cow that gives milk. His rounds are disrupted when a gang of thugs kidnap Oswald's girlfriend and the cow and Oswald give chase. And, of course, there's a happy ending.This is the third Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon. During the first year the toons were made, Walt Disney directed the films. Later, when they became successful, Universal Studios rewarded Walt by threatening to cut his and the rest of the staff's salaries! No wonder Walt and his chief animator (Ub Iwerks) left and went on to make their own film character, Mickey Mouse.This cartoon is pretty typical of the early Oswald cartoons in style--pretty simple black and white drawings, silly gags and a completely silent film. Later, sound effects and music were added to the films AFTER the success of Disney's STEAMBOAT WILLIE (1928). The version I saw did have the added sound. In many ways the film looks a lot like the early Mickey cartoons--the characters look and act a lot alike, have a girlfriend who is very similar and the gags are almost interchangeable. It's all very good for 1927.

For years, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was an unseen legend known only to cartoon geeks who devoured animation history books (the fact that my father saw them as a child and regaled me with stories about them also helped). The rediscovery of these films prove that the acclaim about them is not merely the stuff of film folklore.This episode tells the story of a robotic cow that serves as the heroic hare's "Cow Friday" (perhaps inspired by the sci-fi silent classic "Metropolis?"). The title character is quite sympathetic and the toon as a whole displays far greater character development and situation comedy than was typical of cartoons of that era. But this does not get in the way of the gags, which are quite plentiful and well done within six or seven minutes. Strongly recommended.

The Mechanical Cow is the first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon I've ever seen. If the plot seems familiar, maybe because it's done by Walt Disney before he lost Oswald to the character's copyright owners and started his own studio to create Mickey Mouse. The rabbit gets waken by an alarm clock who punches him in the face. He then tries to wake the title character who takes awhile. When they're both up they ride into town and come across a hippo mother and baby. Oswald feeds the baby with a giant bottle he takes from the mechanical cow's "body" and, with a tube attached, siphons it to the baby. Oswald then visits his rabbit girlfriend and he shoos the cow away so they can be alone together. Moments later, the girlfriend gets kidnapped by some dogs (I think) and the cow comes back to help Oswald rescue her. They find the kidnappers who chase after them after the girlfriend is rescued. Oswald, the girlfriend, and the cow stop at a cliff and wait for the kidnappers to fall into a pit of sharks below before the rabbit, his girlfriend, and cow ride off into the sunset. The end. Amusing from beginning to end. If you're interested in Disney's pre-Mickey creations, this Oswald short is highly recommended!