martin-kooistra
Horrifying mistreatment of animals on public display, given a light touch by the commentary, which makes it even more disturbing. A shocking indictment of attitudes towards animals in general, whose only grace is that it shows us how much those attitudes have improved since then.
TheExpatriate700
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.
lemon_magic
It's easy for us to make fun of short little clips like "Catching Trouble" 50 years down the line, of course. Viewers watching our mainstream output 50 years from now will roll their eyes (or their cybernetic optic implants, whatever) at things like "American Idol", "Grey's Anatomy", "CSI" or "Law And Order" in the exact same way...and God only knows what they will make of "X Files." So the biggest problem is that this clip simply didn't age well. Also part of the problem here is that "my boyfriend" Ross has no camera appeal at all and no one on the film crew seems to have coached him on how to read a line on camera. (They probably just wanted to shoot some footage and get the hell out of the swamp!) He's certainly intrepid enough as he matter-of-factly goes about catching wild animals that could easily wound, maim or kill him if they had the chance, and he doesn't seem to want to hurt or scare them. The animals are just a way of paying the bills. You don't see cattle farmers or pig farmers getting sentimental or sadistic about their "cash crops", do you? And neither does Ross. Still, this is pretty grating to modern sensibilities, what with the patronizing narrator's comments about "Old Sourpuss", etc. Someone making a short like this today would be burned at the stake by the SPCA.
Pietro_Shakarian
"Catching Trouble" sucks period. It features the cruel Ross who catches animals for zoos with his faithful Indian sidekick, "Ol' Sourpuss" or something like that. Ross adventures around to bring bear cubs, snakes, wild cats, and other animals back to the zoo in ways which would make the Animal Humane Society want to burn every existing copy of this.I highly recommend watching the MST3k version of this stinker.
AD
