Quick on the Vigor is the 175th Popeye cartoon, released by Famous Studios in 1950. It features Popeye and Olive with Bluto the Strongman as the main antagonist, and the carny barker and carny worker as bit players. While loosely based on the 1935 Fleischer cartoon King of the Mardi Gras, it expands on its theme by substituting a steamy relationship between Olive Oyl and the antagonist for the slapstick prowess contests that characterize the earlier work. With its themes of muscle admiration, attempted rape, and cruel physical punishment, it is arguably one of the most titillating and violent of the Famous Studios creations.
The title is a play on Quick on the Trigger, the name of a 1948 Columbia Pictures film in the then-popular "Durango Kid" series.
Plot
The cartoon opens with an establishing shot of the County Fair. We see Popeye and Olive strolling through the grounds on a date, when a Test of Strength device catches Popeye's eye. Using his fist, he succeeds in ringing the bell at the top and wins a box of sweets for Olive. He then repeats the stunt, over and over. We are shown Olive's face, following the staccato rhythm of Popeye's endeavors on her behalf.
Suddenly, we hear a barker's voice in the distance: "Introducing BLUTO, the Strongest Man in the World!" Olive glances to the side with a look of surprise and excitement on her face as we are shown the provocatively attired Strongman, looking smug and confident on the stage with a crowd of male admirers surrounding him. As the barker cries, "Each and every muscle on his herculean physique vibrates!" Bluto flexes, with his outlandish biceps dancing in time to lascivious hoochie-coochie music. "Ba-ROTH-ERR!!" Olive exclaims. "What a mess of muscle!" As she says this the Strongman notices her, with his own look of surprise and excitement, his eyeballs turning to hearts as he is enraptured. We return to Popeye (he has won every box of candy and put the Test of Strength operator out of business), who realizes with a start he has now lost Olive's interest to a formidable rival. As the action returns to the stage area, we watch Bluto grasp a steel I-beam in his teeth; he then bends it into the shape of a heart and presents it to a most receptive Olive. An angry Popeye grabs the steel heart away from Olive and denounces Bluto as a fake and a fraud. There follows a series of strength contests, with Popeye's tricks (e.g. levitating a 1000-lb barbell with an air jet from his pipe) seemingly allowing him to match the bodybuilder's feats of genuine power. Finally Bluto locks himself into a trick safe and breaks out and challenges Popeye to duplicate the feat in an untricked model on the other side of the stage. Popeye takes the bait and is trapped.
With her boyfriend out of the way, Bluto offers to show Olive the fair. The two parade arm-in-arm and are soon on the Ferris wheel together. Bluto stops the ride at the top with his leg and asks Olive for a kiss. She refuses and jumps to the next car; Bluto perches himself on the support structure and tries to grab her as she comes by. Olive keeps jumping to the next lower car as an impasse is reached. She screams for Popeye to come to her aid. Without resorting to spinach, Popeye turns his trusty pipe into a blowtorch and extricates himself from his predicament. He dislodges Bluto's perch from the Ferris wheel, but inadvertently sends the wheel itself--with Olive on board--careening on a path of destruction through the fairgrounds. He sets out to save her; Bluto, sliding down from the top, yanks the 80-foot steel beam from its concrete footing, and, holding it over his head and running with it, clocks Popeye, molding it to his shape.
The Strongman then takes off after Olive, who is now trapped on a moving roller coaster. After a series of near-misses (including a highly suggestive scene involving a crosscut saw), Bluto is on the verge of catching up to Olive and forcing himself on her as Popeye finds his spinach. The sailor grabs the roller coaster track and creates a wave as if it was a liquid and sends the villain's car his way. Bluto, finally losing his smug coolness and visibly angered, cocks his fist and winds his arm to let Popeye have it, but the empowered sailor beats him to the punch and sends the musclebound behemoth back up the roller coaster track without the car. We watch as Bluto's head smashes every railroad tie to splinters.
In the final scene we see that Olive has learned her lesson and is now attentively and worshipfully watching Popeye utilizing his bicep (instead of his fist) to ring the bell at the top of the Test of Strength pole over and over and over. As the camera pans upwards, we see that the Strongman's mangled body, after its devastating ride up the roller coaster track, has come to rest at the top of the pole and is now on the receiving end of vicious retaliatory punishment. Popeye's spinach has apparently made him the new "Strongest Man in the World."
Gallery
External links
- Quick on the Vigor at the Internet Movie Database