Colonel Heeza Liar's African Hunt
About Colonel Heeza Liar's African Hunt
Colonel Heeza Liar seizes a tiger's tail, having taken it for a snake, and spends a bad stretch getting away from the animal. He next tries to net a bear's ears, which he thinks are a butterfly, and is chased up a tree while the bear shakes the trunk. He gets clear, and with one shot he claims a larger bag of game than anyone else has made in the same fix.
Cast & crew
More about Colonel Heeza Liar's African Hunt
John R. Bray directed and animated the short for Bray Productions. Pathé Frères released it on 14 January 1914. In Britain it was called Colonel Heeza Liar's Big Game Hunt. It is not the same cartoon as Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa (1913); trade papers give the two films different gags, with only some business in common.
Themes
Background
Paul J. Rainey's African Hunt films had been in circulation since 1912. This cartoon sends Bray's boasting colonel after the same kind of big game.
Making
Bray drew the colonel as a repeat character for Pathé. The hunt gags are the whole reel: a tiger's tail, a bear's ears, and one impossible shot.
Reviews
Moving Picture World, 31 January 1914, called it an animated cartoon by J.R. Bray "full of fresh fancy, at times very humorous," and said it "made the audience laugh heartily again and again."
Music
Silent.
Notes
- AFI lists the running time as 5 minutes.
- Moving Picture World carried a release notice on 10 January 1914, page 208.
- The next short in the series was Colonel Heeza Liar Shipwrecked (1914).
- Michael Barrier wrote that the January 1914 title was chosen to sit beside Paul J. Rainey's African Hunt pictures; the 1913 and 1914 trade write-ups do not describe one film simply retitled.
Scenes
- The colonel nets at a bear's ears, thinking they are a butterfly, and the bear runs him up a tree and shakes it.
- One shot, and he claims a pile of game no one else has bagged in the same situation.
Influenced by
- Paul J. Rainey's African Hunt pictures (from 1912)
