So much average

A Major Disappointment

Blistering performances.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Catching Trouble is now mostly known for its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is a short film documenting the activities of Ross,who works for the Chicago Zoo as an animal catcher. What ensues is some of the more harrowing animal cruelty you'll find in a film outside Cannibal Holocaust.Over the course of ten minutes, Ross captures bob cats, bear cubs, and rattlesnakes. Only the rattlesnake sequence isn't cringe inducing. Ross cuts down trees and drags around screaming baby animals. The scene with the bear cubs is particularly disgusting, particularly when one considers that back in the old days, zoos frequently obtained baby animals by killing their mothers.Best watched either for dark comedy, as in the case of MST3K, or as a document of attitudes toward animals during the 1930s.

I am a huge MST3k fan... In fact, what sent me here tonight was a 2am viewing of Teenage Caveman, the episode which contains this short subject. I almost always hate reading the comments of MST source material because 90% are filled with people who regurgitate the mst jokes and try to pass the viewpoints of the mst crew as their own. Let's take a step back from our hypersensitivity to political correctness and go back in time 80+ years to the spring/summer of 1936. The Baseball hall of fame opened with it's first inductees including Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. Ferdinand Porche's new Volkswagen hit the streets. Jesse Owens set the 100 meter record. "Gone With the Wind" is first published. The Nazis run the Olympic torch through the US in preparation for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Hitler violates the treaty of Versailles by invading Rhineland. Cars were in the cities, but in rural America, people rode horses, used outhouses and read by candlelight. Women had only been voting for 18 years by this point, but race restrictions would remain for another 10. The elderly were children during the civil war and had first hand knowledge of slavery. TV was only a few years old. Most listened to the radio for entertainment. For an American male, seeing another country probably meant that you fought in the great war 20 years ago. The way most people saw the world, or even distant parts of the country like the Everglades, was by watching short subjects like this in a movie theater. The point of this history lesson is that the world was a different place. In 1936, kids played cowboys and Indians. Husing introduced Ross and "his faithful Seminole Indian guide", which he later abbreviated to "his Semanole" in a bid to play into the cool factor of the guy being a "real" American Indian. For the period, that wasn't a racist remark any more than "my boyfriend Ross" was a homosexual remark.So, please, park your white guilt and just take this short for what it is. An interesting slice of the 1930s that didn't age well.

First of all, this movie was made back in 1936 and it's a bit like talking to your grandpa. You understand it's his way & not malicious, but it's still a bit outdated and un-PC. Based on the movie on it's own, I would give it a 1. The extra vote was for the MST3k version, which improves upon the pain. Definitely do not watch alone & remember to adopt an orphan afterward. Our protagonist, Ross Allen, is described as a modern day Tarzan. His job is catching live animals for the zoo from the Florida Everglades. With the assistance of his faithful Seminole guide, who's name is either "Eh Wat" or nothing at all, he fulfills an order asking for the following: 1 live bobcat, 2 cub black bears, 3 six-foot diamondback rattlers & a partridge in a pear tree (I made that last part up). Ross has a variety of techniques for capturing these living animals. Techniques such as: chopping down the tree the animal is in (you could also have your man servant attempt this), chasing animals to & from trees, smashing animals into the ground, pulling animals out of the trees or water-boarding a bear. In all honesty, by the end, I was hoping one of those snakes would get a nice bite of Ross. Time eventually did.-Celluloid Rehab

For those who think the '50s are something we should get back to, who don't like the concepts supposedly described in the shapeless term "political correctness," well here's a movie to love and cherish.No one has yet noticed the racial aspects of this short. Let's talk about the Seminole - he doesn't apparently have a name, he is known as "Old Sourpuss" or worse, "his (Ross's) Seminole." Excuse me, "HIS SEMINOLE?" I guess the idea that possessing a person of another race is not admirable thing to do hadn't filtered down to southern Florida at the time. Anyway, Old Sourpuss goes around the swamp in his tribal costume, which to be honest looks more like a woman's dress than a Scottish kilt does. I suspect the Seminoles are aware of this, and save the outfit for ceremonial occasions. But the director probably said, "Hey, Sourpuss! Why don't you put on your traditional dress -er costume! That will really show our audience the white guy is in charge!" Ross captures a cougar, and upon reaching his little facility puts it into a glass-sided box about the size of a cat carrier. "Home sweet home," the narrator says. Yes, I'm sure wild cougars feel so safe and comforted in a small box that smells of the last abducted animal that was thrown in there. Then something else no one seems to have noticed. Ross is shown hauling away twin bear cubs, whose pitiful cries should have even the most animal-apathetic wanting to throw something large and heavy at Ross. May I be the one to ask the obvious question: WHERE IS THE MOTHER BEAR? And don't tell me the cubs were orphaned by a forest fire just before the movie. We must assume there is more to the incident that wasn't filmed, that *really* makes Ross look despicable and which even this thick as a brick filmmaker realized audiences would not enjoy watching.And let's not mention the obviously staged escape attempt of one of the cubs.Yes, brutality against wildlife and unmistakable assertions of a racial caste presented for light viewing. The '50s, you can keep them.