Everybody Rides The Carousel invites the viewer along on eight "rides" through the different stages of life. Based on the work by Erik Erikson, one of the most influential psychoanalytic theorists of this century, the film explores the inner feelings and conflicted emotions experienced during each stage of personality development. With distinctive and poetic animation, John and Faith Hubley visualize the conflicts, joys, problems and delights we all experience on the carousel of life.
A tour of the waters near a South Sea island, introducing us to the various kinds of marine life, including the pickled herring, the hermit crab, the starfish, a seahorse race, and many other puns. Among the running gags, a two-headed fish who keeps asking for directions to Mr. Ripley and a professor in a diving sphere looking for a rare wim-wam whistling shark.
While pursuing a little dog who's wandered into an amusement park at night, the park's watchdog accidentally switches on the power to all the rides and attractions, bewildering the pair of canines.
A conductor, in silhouette against sheet music, leads the title tune, which dissolves into a series of placid landscapes. As the music picks up, we see a water wheel, then a dancing fairy emerges from a whirlpool and begins singing, to the delight of small woodland creatures. The birds awaken sleeping cherubs, who begin their work of harvesting all things blue and adding them to the river. The birds even do their part, harvesting the color blue from the rainbow. Everyone tugs to open a floodgate and unleash the cerulean waters. A swan, festively decorated, leads a gondola of sorts lit by fireflies.
Animated Soviet Propaganda. The story of the invasion of Russia, during the revolution, by foreign troops from the United States, Canada, the U.K., Japan, Czechoslavakia and Poland.
Porky and his friend Dizzy Duck go fishing, but their trip is cut short by a thunderstorm. They take refuge in an old building that appears haunted, though the biggest hazards are an old bearskin that lands on a swivel chair, a dog that gets tangled up in chains and a diving helmet, and their own clumsiness generally.
Popeye's fan club sends a telegram asking them to tone down the violence and act civilized. So everyone dresses up and acts formal - for a while, at least.
Porky Pig inhabits an igloo in the Arctic, where he beds with a covering a several live, furry polar bears, bathes in a shower whose water instantly freezes into long icicles, and dances in the ice and snow with the native fauna. When a greedy fur trapper named I. Killem arrives to threaten Porky's walrus, bear, and seal friends, Porky acts to repel the trapper by firing a musket which spits out buckshot and explosives. Killem flees in what he thinks is a kayak but is actually a whale.
Porky works at the Snappy Rubber Company. His dog, Flat Foot Flookey, is determined to follow him into the plant, despite the rules. And Flookey's clumsiness means he's not exactly going to be able to sneak in like when he falls into a vat of rubberizing solution, and molds his face into a number of then-popular movie stars, or makes Porky's boss (a walrus) drop a stack of tires.
The Two Curious Puppies visit a model home with a panoply of modern inventions, including an annoying robot that sweeps up anything that touches the floor.
Porky and Pinky go to the beach. As Porky tries to nap, Pinky keeps whacking him with his little shovel. Then he fakes drowning in a shallow puddle. Porky enters a swim race, and Pinky sets a fake shark to follow him.
A crafty mouse decides to remove his one obstacle to obtaining a block of cheese - Sylvester Cat - by stirring up trouble between Sylvester and Mike the Bulldog, two buddies turned to enemies by the mouse's clever set-ups implicating Sylvester in attacks on Mike.
Kicked off the boat in Italy, Charlie forces himself upon a pizzeria owner. Donning his best Italian accent and garb, Charlie sets to work as a waiter, astonishing and horrifying the customers with his barefoot grape-stomping and musical rendition of "Atsa Matta for You?"
Two polite gophers are in their underground home, playing gin, when a dog buries his bone right on top of them. They try to negotiate with the dog so that he will bury the bone elsewhere. But the dog refuses to be cooperative.
Woody is a wandering cowboy who notices an ad at a western post office advertising for a new mail delivery rider. Woody accepts but is warned of mail thief Buzz Buzzard. Woody regards the buzzard as a pushover and begins his trek. Sure enough, Woody eventually encounters the buzzard who uses every trick possible to snatch the mail from Woody's hands spreading tacks across the road and dynamiting a bridge. But Woody is prepared for Buzz's antics...
The cartoon opens with a line of people (including Woody) drooling at the window of a market butcher's shop (Buzz Buzzard). What ensues is a short series of gags about how Buzz dishonestly (and literally) "jacks" up all his prices. Since Woody is broke as usual, he sneaks in and gets thrown out by Buzz. On the way out, Woody collides with a bottle of invisible ink and turns partially invisible. Buzz can only see parts of Woody's body and thinks he's been dismembered, (this scene is actually kind of gruesome) so he sweeps him into a trap door to get rid of him. When Woody awakes, he realizes what is happening, and douses himself with the rest of the ink...