Lupo the Butcher is a three-minute 1987 animated film created by Danny Antonucci, the same gentleman who did Ed, Edd n Eddy.
Lupo, an Italian-Canadian butcher puts a large rack of ribs on a table and starts chopping. He was angrily muttering at the start of the film, but his bad mood worsens when the ribs he's chopping fall on the floor. Lupo is already yelling insults and obscenities when he accidentally chops off his thumb with the meat cleaver. Lupo runs around screaming and cursing for a while as blood splashes everywhere, until his body literally falls apart.
So, not a Disney short.
Appropriately, Lupo the Butcher was produced by Marv Newland of Bambi Meets Godzilla fame.
Clips of the short were later used in the Canadian independent feature film Terminal City Ricochet, in which a screening of the film is raided by the titular town's Culture Police.
In November of 2020, it was announced that a Lupo the Butcher series was in-development for Netflix, but was ultimately canceled in 2022 due to creative differences.
Tropes:
- All Just a Dream: A Converse shoe commercial has him waking up from a nightmare of a living Converse shoe about to saw him in half with a chainsaw. Relieved, he goes back to sleep, as a giant Converse shoe creeps up from the dark.
- Asshole Victim: Lupo is an absolute bastard, so it's entertaining to see his entire body start falling apart.
- Bloody Hilarious: It's pretty funny when Lupo is running around holding a hand that is gushing blood from a severed thumb, while screaming "Goddamn, I gonna die!"
- The Butcher: A very, very ill-tempered one.
- Buy or Get Lost: There's a handmade sign in the shop that reads "THIS NO LIBARY, BUY OR GET OUT".
- Deranged Animation: A butcher falls apart, ending with his severed head lying on the floor, pushing itself up by the tongue, and screaming insults. Yep.
- Fingore: Once Lupo chops his finger off, all hell breaks loose.
- Flipping the Bird: Lupo does this at one of the ribs as it bounces away.
- Four-Fingered Hands: Lupo has these.
- Funny Foreigner: Part of the humor, as Lupo is obviously an Italian immigrant and speaks fractured English.
- Gonk: Lupo is anything but handsome. He has a weird shaped bald head and horrendous teeth.
- High-Pressure Blood: Lupo's hand spouts blood like a garden hose from the thumb, not to mention all the blood everywhere when he starts falling apart.
- I'll Kill You!: Lupo shouts this as a piece of meat falls to the ground from his cutting board.
- Iris Out: Subverted when Lupo's severed head squeezes its way through the iris and continues to scream obscenities and insults throughout the credits.
- Line Boil: Lines boiling as befits a cartoon hand-drawn in an old-timey style.
- Minimalist Cast: Lupo is the only character.
- Off with His Head!: One MTV bumper has him chopping a dead chicken's head off. It suddenly comes to life and chops his head off.Lupo: (to the headless chicken) You stink like feet!
- Record Needle Scratch: Used to transition from the opening title card to the action of the cartoon.
- Rule of Funny: Why does Lupo's body fall apart? Why not?
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Lupo wears out the stock of English-language bad words and falls back on swearing in Italian.
- White Void Room: All action inside the butcher shop is staged against a white void background.
