The Living Desert (1953)

Is it hot in here, or is it just me?  Wait, what am I saying?  Of course it’s hot in here.  We’re in the desert.  It’s always hot in here.  Today we leave behind the world of plot and character and pay a visit to the natural world.  Let’s go on an adventure- a True Life Adventure!

Disclaimer: This blog is purely recreational and not for profit. Any material, including images and/or video footage, are property of their respective companies, unless stated otherwise. The authors’ claim no ownership of this material. The opinions expressed therein reflect those of the authors and are not to be viewed as factual documentation. All photos are capped from my copy of the movie with InstantShot! unless otherwise specified.

The whole point of Bambi was to paint the natural world in a light that was more accessible to audiences.  In the late 40’s and early 50’s, Walt decided to take that idea a step farther.  Once again, he told the stories of realistic animal life, but instead of animating those stories, he let the real animals tell them themselves.  The first eight of these True Life Adventures stories were short films: Seal Island, Beaver Valley, Nature’s Half Acre, The Olympic Elk, Water Birds, Bear Country, and Prowlers of the Everglades.   But Walt always looked to go bigger and bolder.  A piece of footage of a tarantula and a wasp fighting intrigued Walt enough to turn his True Life Adventure idea into a full-length feature.

It was at this point that RKO flat-out refused to distribute the film.  They stated that no audience would ever sit through an hour and a half of a dry biology lecture.  But people said no one would sit through an hour and a half of cartoons, either, and look how Snow White turned out.  Anyway, Walt was just about done with RKO, and he had a new trick up his sleeve.  So The Living Desert became the first film to be released under Disney’s very own distribution company: Buena Vista Pictures.

Walt’s team made a concentrated effort to make their documentary entertaining, through the use of Winston Hibler’s witty narration and Paul J. Smith’s music.  This earned The Living Desert awards at Cannes, the Berlin Film Festival, and the Golden Globes.  It even won an Oscar for Best Documentary Film!  It garnered some criticism for the music being inappropriate for the scenes it was set to, and even more for staging some of the “natural” scenes.  But the nature documentary remains a popular form of entertainment, and it’s all thanks to good old Uncle Walt!

Disclaimer: this, like Victory Through Air Power, is very different from anything else I’ve reviewed.  I have no idea what I’m doing.  So… yeah, this’ll be interesting.

STORY?

We open on a spinning copper globe: the symbol of the True Life Adventures. Text on the screen explains that nature has its own story to tell, the photographers are just helping them tell it. To illustrate, an animated paint brush whips up a map of the world. Trade winds bring clouds and rain across the world, but it’s hard for them to make it over the very tallest mountains, and that’s why we have wide flat lands called deserts. One such impassible barrier is Mount Whitney, the highest peak in North America, which prevents rainfall from reaching Death Valley, the lowest.

The narrator then goes on for quite a while calling the desert ugly and lifeless, which… dude. Harsh. And also pretty unnecessary considering the movie’s called The Living Desert. Yet he continues to highlight petrified trees and dried up rivers. Then we come to an interesting phenomenon: the sailing stones, rolling along and leaving tracks in the sand. Back in 1953, no one knew how the stones were moving, so he writes them off as unexplainable. More recent scientists, however, have found that they’re propelled by wind and condensation. Likewise, the film says that the Salton Sea is a large salt deposit because in ancient times, it was an ocean. However, it’s actually formed by a flood that occurred when the Colorado River overflowed and broke a dam, and they’re not ancient at all. The incident occurred in 1905! Not sure if that’s a science fail or a discovery not yet made. So far, things have been a little dry, no pun intended, but then we pan over to some mud pits. They bubble and glorp for a while but it’s made entertaining by the use of plodding music that devolves into a parody of symphonic music.  Made with fart noises.  Yes, really.

And then it’s time for what we’re all really here for: the animals! A lizard pops up out of the sand to eat some lizards, and a snake follows to try to eat the lizard. A roadrunner, described as a nosy creature, has to get involved in everything so he chases after the snake, just for fun. It’s not fun for the snake, though: the roadrunner bites off part of its tail! Next up is a tarantula preparing her lair for an unsuspecting beetle crawling by. And this is probably not a good time to mention I don’t like bugs, especially spiders, but I will tough it out for the sake of the blog. Fortunately, this sequence doesn’t last long. We quickly move on to a chickawawa lizard to watch him munching on some flowers. Actually, you know what? I’m going to use the narration’s line because it’s great. He calls the lizard a “diminutive dinosaur who dines on daisies” and it made me smile a lot. We only spend a second with him before examining the daisies themselves, which grow out of cacti. The various types of cacti provide homes and nests for different kinds of birds, including adorable fuzzy baby hawks. And then it’s time to show how different animals get by without water. And something wonderful happens.

Y’all I feel like I have not seen a turtle on this blog in eons. I’m so happy right now. They’re so cute. I love them. Okay, technically they’re tortoises, but they’re still adorable and they still make that stupid turtle face that I love so much. They make their own water from the leaves they eat and store it underneath their shells. They’re so clever. I love them. We also get to watch them use the piece of shell jutting out of their front to help maneuver over the sand dunes, which means I get to watch them waddle and it’s super cute. A nice waltz starts playing, and the tortoise we’ve been following nods politely to a female tortoise. A rival appears and challenges the first male. The narrator likens their fight to two knights jousting over a fair lady, using the pointy bit of shell as their lances. The music even reflects this by changing to a brassy flourish. The rival curbstomps the hero into some cacti in his effort to flip him over, but eventually the hero tortoise makes a comeback and flips his rival. Now helpless on his back, the rival is vulnerable to heatstroke but the hero plods away with his female. But don’t worry, after some effort, the rival flips back over and goes on his way.  Because turtles are just that great.  I love turtles.

The next animal is cute, too, but not quite as cute as the tortoises. They’re called coatis, long-nosed cousins of the raccoon that migrated from South America. They thrive quite well in the Arizona desert because they can eat almost anything. They’re even immune to scorpion poison, so we get to watch one scarf one of them down without caring about its enormous stinger. We follow the coati to her nest in a hollow log, where her fluffy lil babies are scampering around. We follow the trio’s quest to find some eggs to eat, likening it to a bandit’s capers. The fluffy burglars infiltrate a vulture nest, snag the eggs, and get their loot back to the nest before the mother vulture finds out. The heist imagery is a fun touch, a great example of how Disney took a genre that can easily become boring and made it Disney.

Next up, we meet a breed of wild boar called peccary, and they are scary. A bobcat prowls up on the peccary, hoping to catch them off guard as they’re cooling off in the damp sand. But the bobcat is clearly not a Floridian because he does not know that you do not under any circumstances mess with a wild pig. The only thing bigger than their teeth is their attitude problem. The peccary lose their minds and chase the bobcat across the desert. Desperate to escape, the bobcat scampers up a cactus… but it breaks, and the bobcat plummets right back into the circle of snarling pigs. It’s very tense, made more so by the music (again). Luckily for all the cat lovers out there, the bobcat makes it to the top of another, sturdier cactus. Grooming prickles out of your paws is a small price to pay not to get mauled by a boar!

The narrator takes a moment to make the point that in nature, there are no heroes or villains. I don’t know, man, those peccary looked pretty villainous last time but whatever. To illustrate this point, we follow a rattlesnake as it stalks a pocket mouse. The cute little mouse dives into a hole to escape, but the hole is really a tarantula nest. The snake and the spider battle it out and I’m sure somebody out there is crying at having to see the two creepy crawlies together. Finally, the rattlesnake forfeits and the mouse escapes with its life. Not the best way to paint a rattlesnake as a vicious, relentless hunter. Maybe they were trying for irony. It doesn’t make it super clear, or maybe I’m just dense. That’s a distinct possibility.

Sunset falls over the desert. A hawk perches on top of a cactus, waiting for something. Just what becomes clear a few moments later as bats swarm out by the millions, ready to use their sonar to hunt in the dark. The hawk dives to snag a bat… and misses. She tries again, and gets one, but it escapes her “butterclaws.” This is a really incompetent hawk. On the third try, she finally captures one. The narrator quips that one bat out of a bajillion isn’t much reward for all the effort she put in. Trust me, can relate. The bats’ flight signals that night has really fallen. It’s time to showcase some of the nocturnal creepy crawlies of the desert, like the toads devouring the beetles crawling on the sand. Less cute than the toads are the centipedes and millipedes. The film takes a few moments to showcase the many many creepy bug legs attached to each species. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. The millipede crawls into a tarantula nest (apparently this is a common thing?), but it secretes an odor that repels the giant spider. The toads like them just fine, though, and one hops out to mercifully end the millipede scene. Yuck.

We get a nice reprieve from the gross bugs when we get to watch an elfin owl chillin in a cactus. He has his eye on a burrowing snake, twisting and writhing in and out of the sand. Aaaand then we’re back to the tarantulas, a male and a female at mating season. The narrator nicknames them Romeo and Juliet to further the story, which is a clever little twist. Romeo knocks on Juliet’s door with one gross hairy leg. Juliet answers, Romeo takes her in his arms, and she swoons. I’m not sure what biological purpose flopping over like that serves, I’m not even sure it’s the male and not the female poisoning him so she can make him fertilize her eggs and then eat him. But I also don’t care and the narrator doesn’t elaborate, so let’s move along to the most gloriously weird part of this entire thing.

Our next courtship ritual is that of the scorpion. A male digs a female from her nest and then… Guys. It’s amazing. Mating dances aren’t super unusual in the animal world, but it is unusual for filmmakers to set them to a square dance out of absolutely nowhere. It’s a really abrupt tonal shift but I love it so much. The camera is clearly being manipulated to make the mating dance better resemble a square dance but I don’t even care. Even the owl is made to look like he’s bobbling his head to the music. The whole thing plays like a Youtube meme and I cannot believe the Internet hasn’t gotten their hooks into this. It’s beautiful. This scene garnered the most disparagement from uppity critics like the New York Times but I disagree. Putting moments of pure, bizarre fun like this helps make the world of nature accessible to a wider audience.  Here, watch the majesty for yourself:

Finally, we go to creep on some longhorn beetles.  This one’s a little less romantic. The male goes up to the female, and she chows down on his leg. Once again, a rival male pops up and the two battle it out. The loser skitters away… right into the tarantula’s lair because she’s just everywhere apparently. But it’s fine because longhorn beetles’ mandibles are really really strong. They crush the tarantula’s leg even though it’s like ten times his size, and he gets away. But he doesn’t get very far before running into a toad. The toad tries and fails to eat the beetle, then calls over a much bigger toad. And the narration plays it off like a cheesy gangster film, even naming the big toad Mugsy and telling it to bump off the intruder. Mugsy hops over to eat the longhorn beetle, but it bites his tongue and forces him to spit it out. In the end, though, the big toad wins and the rival longhorn is eaten. Rip.

We switch gears, over to an absolutely adorable little kangaroo rat storing food in her cheek pouches for later. Seriously, I want twenty of these, they’re precious. In the process of burying her loot to make room for more, the kangaroo rat digs up a horned toad lizard. Another kangaroo rat watches the first one dig, and the first gets annoyed and starts throwing sand in his face. The narration makes a point of telling us that kangaroo rats, like the tortoise, make their own water from the food they eat and store it inside their bodies. Then they have a nice little dust bath, rolling around adorably in the sand. The mother kangaroo rat returns to her nest to feed her two babies, but scents danger. There’s a king snake approaching, and she doesn’t have much time to get her babies to the safety of their secondary burrow. It’s legitimately tense. The second baby gets stuck down one of the tunnels and the snake makes it within inches of it. Luckily, Mrs. Kangaroo Rat (the narrator’s words, not mine) gets there first. The snake gives up and goes to menace a gecko, but he only gets his tail and it’ll grow back.

Next up, a sidewinder slithers along sideways to a really funky cymbal beat. He curls up in wait for a kangaroo rat, but the one he finds has no intention of being lunch. He pelts the sidewinder with sand, and a bunch of others join in. The sidewinder’s eyes have no lids and are vulnerable to the blinding sand, and also it’s half buried. This whole thing is set to circus music, by the way. As the sidewinder sidewinds away, the kangaroo rats celebrate. It’s clearly the same two seconds of footage repeated over and over again, but the kangaroo rats are so cute that watching them bounce around losing their minds is glorious. They’re so bouncy! A ringtailed cat and an owl try to crash the party. The owl pounces on the rats, but the ringtailed cat decides he’d rather eat the owl so he pounces on it. The rats escape with their lives and go off to have another kangaroo rat rager. Oh, and apparently the ringtailed cat is another raccoon relative, and not a cat at all. All right, scientists, whatever.

The sun rises over the desert. Cute little ground squirrels pop out of the sand to enjoy their breakfast. As they’re feasting, a roadrunner comes in to bother them, pecking at their tails. So the squirrels gang up peck at his tail! A skunk comes in to crash the party, ticked off at the world. Since skunks can’t write on their Myspace and blast MCR like the rest of us, he sprays the ground squirrels. The party doesn’t stop much to the skunk’s chagrin, and another squirrel pops up. Named Skinny by the narration, he waggles his tail in the hopes of joining his friends. They won’t let poor Skinny join in any ground squirrel games. He gets too close to their food so they gang up on them and there’s an epic squirrel fight. But soon they find they have bigger problems: a gila monster.

The squirrels scatter and run from the poisonous lizard… all except one. Skinny gets ready to throw down. The gila monster strikes but misses. Skinny keeps taunting the gila monster. The other squirrels watch with bated breath. Finally, the lizard gets bored of Skinny’s nonsense and lumbers away. Then all the ground squirrels loved him and they all went out to eat. But it’s hard to eat and sing Christmas songs when the rock you’re standing on to eat is actually a tortoise. Skinny rides to glory on the back of a turtle, which is totally how I want to leave everywhere forever.

We’ve made it to the scene that started it all. A tarantula hawk wasp flies around in search of a tarantula on which to lay her eggs. Instead, she finds a swarm of ants that attacks her, swarming all over her to weigh her down so she can’t fly away. She shakes them off, and finds what she’s looking for. The wasp and the tarantula square up. The spider is larger and stronger, but the wasp is faster and more skilled, and those are always the best heroes. The spider gets in one good hit, but the wasp quickly recovers and stings the spider’s abdomen again and again. As she’s attacking its weak point for massive damage, it twitches and falls, paralyzed.

The wasp drags the spider to her hole to bury it, even tugging huge rocks out of the way to do it. Finally, she lays a single egg on the spider’s body so her larva has something to eat when it hatches.  Finally, our rattlesnake friend is back, chasing after a ground squirrel. But a red-tailed hawk isn’t going to let something so cute and fuzzy die that easily. It stalks after the rattlesnake and dives down to strike at its head with its talons. The snake coils up and shakes its rattle to warn off the predator. The two fight, and it’s actually probably the most epic moment in the entire film. Finally, the hawk gets the rattlesnake’s head in its talons and squeezes. Snakes are really not having a good day in this movie.

Clouds roll in over the mountains, kicking up a desert storm. The thick rain obscures everything, and I’m sure this is supposed to be epic but it happens like every day here at three o’clock on the dot. There’s a really nice effect where a clarinet and triangle hit in the music with every drop that rolls off a cactus, though. It’s very reminiscent of Little April Shower. Finally, the rain ends, and a beautiful rainbow arches over the cacti. But the storm isn’t over just because the rain is. The canyons rumble. Runoff from the rain on a higher elevation pours down to an area with lower elevation. With no nearby body of water to pour down to, it just keeps rushing. A flash flood roars through the desert. Finally, it seeps into the earth, becomes liquidy mud pits, and dries out to nothing. The dried mud bakes and cracks, but the water’s still there, deep underground. It’s enough to water dormant seeds under the surface of the sand, allowing an array of beautiful flowers to bloom. Just as quickly as the time-lapsed flowers open, they close up and wither away. The film ends on a rather lovely shot of a hawk sitting on top of a rock.

I was really excited to do the True Life Adventures when I first started this project. I even tried to find the TLA short films, but ultimately failed. However, the 50’s have been rough. The Sword and the Rose and even Robin Hood a little bit made me a little bit apprehensive. Disney’s live-action output so far has not really been fascinating. The Living Desert was an extremely pleasant surprise! I haven’t laughed this hard at a movie since Alice in Wonderland, and I don’t even care that some of the sequences are obviously staged or manipulated. It’s a great introduction to the world of desert creatures, very entertaining for audiences who aren’t biology majors. As someone with an interest in nature but a very short attention span, the humor and attempts at narrative were very welcome. And seriously. There are jousting turtles. If that’s not the most epic thing you’ve ever heard of, I don’t like you.

ARTISTRY

A good chunk of this film was actually filmed in a conference room in a hotel in Tucson.  Any time the background is solid sand, it’s probably a tabletop, built to represent the real desert landscape right down to the spider holes.  I actually didn’t find that a detriment, considering how difficult it would have been in 1953 to safely get some of this excellent footage in the wild.  The sequences that were actually filmed in the desert, though, are stunning.  There are some beautiful sunrises and sunsets that the use of Technicolor really makes pop.  There’s so much brown in it, obviously, but the artistic directors use that to emphasize things like the sky and the cacti.  It really, really works.

MUSIC

This film came under fire for its heavy use of music.  However, that was one of my personal favorite parts of the entire thing.  It works just like it does in Disney’s animated films to underscore the animal action, making it more accessible to a wider audience.  Standouts include the tortoise’s fanfare, the sidewinders’ hypnotic cymbal crashes, and of course, the scorpion hoedown.  Some of it’s actually quite stirring, as well, especially at the end during the rainstorm and subsequent flowers blooming.  I don’t know what those reviewers were talking about, honestly.  This movie wouldn’t have been half as great as it is without the music.

THEME PARK INFLUENCE

photo credit

When Disneyland first opened, Frontierland was one of the most popular sections of the park, and one of the largest. Its anchor attraction was a slow, meandering ride through different natural wonders called Mine Train Thru Nature’s Wonderland. Many of these natural scenes were inspired by different True Life Adventures, including- you guessed it- the Living Desert. This ride was closed down in 1977 when thrill rides became more popular, replaced by a little thing you may have heard of called Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. I can’t speak for the Paris and Tokyo versions, but Disneyland and Walt Disney World still retain remnants of the Living Desert portions. And actually? None of this showed up in my research.  My sister just loves the cat hanging out on top of the cactus, and Big Thunder’s her favorite Magic Kingdom ride. And then I watched The Living Desert and the bobcat scene came on and I threw my box of cookies in shock because THAT’S THE CAT. But y’all aren’t here for my personal nonsense. Living Desert shows up on Big Thunder.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Living Desert was not what I expected in the best possible way.  There are very few documentaries that try to be entertaining, and this one not only tried but succeeded uproariously.  Is it 100% “true life?”  No.  But other than the name, it’s not trying to be.  It wants to introduce audiences to the natural world, not go in depth.  And it succeeds marvelously in that, making the animals’ stories understandable for everyone.

Favorite scene: The tortoises jousting.  Because turtles. Honorable mention has to go to the scorpion hoedown, though.  But the turtles win.  I love turtles.

Final rating: 7/10.   Highly entertaining, far more so than I expected and far more so than the past few films. It loses a couple points for trying to be something it’s not and for the uncomfortably high number of spiders and bugs.  But even that was workable.