El Terrible Toreador (Cartoon, 1929)

El Terrible Toreador is a 1929 animated short from Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies series, released on September 26, 1929. Directed by Walt Disney, animated primarily by Ub Iwerks, and scored by Carl Stalling, this black-and-white cartoon runs roughly 6 minutes. It’s the second Silly Symphony, a series known for pairing music with whimsical visuals over coherent plots, and it leans heavily on slapstick and absurdity, set to melodies from Bizet’s Carmen—like the "Habanera" and "Toreador Song."
The cartoon splits into two loosely connected parts. It begins in a festive cantina, where a barmaid dances with a mug of beer balanced on her head, swaying to the music. She serves a man in a white suit—possibly a soldier or officer—who tips her with a coin she slips into her blouse. Her little dance earns another coin, which lands in a spittoon. When the officer gets grabby, a toreador outside spots the flirtation and storms in, jealous. A scuffle ensues: the toreador sprays beer foam in the officer’s face, and the officer’s puffed-up chest bursts open like a popped balloon, exposing his humiliation. The barmaid laughs and saunters off with the toreador, leaving the officer deflated.
The scene then jumps to a bullring, where the toreador faces a bull that looks suspiciously like Clarabelle Cow, an early Disney character. The barmaid and officer watch from the stands—her cheering, him sulking. The bullfight is more playful than perilous, packed with gags. The officer tosses the toreador a pepper-laced bouquet (meant as sabotage), which makes the bull sneeze and charge chaotically. The toreador taunts the bull, dodging and weaving, until the wild finale: he grabs the bull’s tongue and yanks its insides out, flipping it inside-out in a grotesque, cartoonish twist. He then strikes a victorious pose atop the defeated bull as the crowd roars and the film ends.
Visually, it’s a product of its time—rubber-hose animation with exaggerated, floppy movements and minimal detail. The characters are archetypes: the toreador’s cocky but goofy, the barmaid’s a flirty bystander, and the officer’s a pompous fool. The music drives the action, syncing dance steps and pratfalls to Carmen’s rhythms, though the story’s thin—just a vehicle for laughs. The bull’s inside-out fate is a standout, landing the short in the “From the Vault” section of the Walt Disney Treasures: More Silly Symphonies DVD for its edgy humor.