Porky's Midnight Matinee

Porky's Midnight Matinee is a 1941 Looney Tunes short directed by Charles M. Jones.
== Plot ==
Porky Pig is working backstage flipping switches and things while singing and whistling "You Ought to be in Pictures", but he is stopped by a "Psst". It came from a an African pygmy ant in a cage and it wants Porky to let him out. So Porky open the cage door and did let him out. When the ant went out, it made a dash for it. Porky who spun and fell because of the dashing ant looks at the bottom of the cage and is surprised by the price of the ant, $162,422,503.51. Porky then sees the ant on a rope and runs after it, but he trips over a trunk and falls into it. He emerges from the trunk wearing a magician's hat and takes it off only to find that a magic rabbit is sitting on his head. The ant mocks and laughs at Porky's misfortune. Eventually, the rabbit comes off of Porky's head, he puts on his work hat back on and runs upstairs.
The ant sees Porky coming and swing onto a platform. The ant then walks on a high wire with Porky right on its tail. The ant stops Porky and shows him what's down below, indicating that Porky's high up. Porky nervously tries to walk back to the platform, but the ant wiggles and jiggles that wire and causes Porky to fall down. The ant then slides down a rope, reaches the bottom and spots a table full of food. So it decides to go there. First it jumps up & down on a sandwich, falls into the bread, takes a piece of it and eats it. Porky just caught up with the ant and attempts squish it by slamming his hand down on the sandwich, but it got away. He then finds the ant on a jar of mustard and sticks his hand in there. But again, the ant escapes. The ant while sitting on a soda bottle then showed Porky how to remove his hand from the jar, which is to smash it on the table. Porky succeeds, but his hand is covered in mustard and sticks it to his mouth.
The ant then Porky a bottle of turpentine to drink. This may be an attempt to kill Porky as the ant then shows Porky a lighted match. But Porky was no fool. He attempts to catch the ant by diving onto the table, but all be got is raining food and meat on his head. Porky then decides to lure the ant out of hiding by holding a stick of candy cane for the ant. The ant took the bait, but he switches the candy for a stick of dynamite. Porky throws the stick of dynamite and it pushes away the candy. Porky tries to warn the ant about the dynamite, but it wouldn't listen, it just lies there on the dynamite. Porky hides as the dynamite explodes, but it didn't blow the ant up. Instead it took the ant back to his cage. Porky smiles now that the ant is back where it belongs and the now scorched black ant smiles too.
== Availability ==
Porky Pig 101 DVD Cover.png|(2017) DVD Porky Pig 101, Disc 5 (uses 90s print soundtrack with the incorrect 1937 fanfare from "Porky's Railroad" playing over the Looney Tunes opening titles)
== Censorship ==
When this short aired on Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon as a computer-colorized version for a short time in 1993, two parts were cut:
* The part where Porky eats hot mustard and the pygmy ant gives him turpentine to wash the taste out of his mouth.
* The end in which the African pygmy ant is in blackface following an explosion is replaced with a previous shot from the ant looking down from the balcony.
== Notes ==
* Some prints of the redrawn colorized version use the opening rings from "Tom Turk and Daffy".
* This cartoon entered the public domain in 1969 as Warner Bros.-Seven Arts did not renew the copyright.
== Gallery ==
Porkys-midnight-matinee.jpg|Lobby card
== References ==
Category:Porky Pig Cartoons
Category:Looney Tunes Shorts
Category:Shorts
Category:1941
Category:Cartoons directed by Chuck Jones
Category:Black-and-white cartoons
Category:Post-1935 Black & White Looney Tunes
Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc
Category:Cartoons produced by Leon Schlesinger
Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling
Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn
Category:Cartoons in the Sunset Productions package
Category:Public domain films