Gunfights are diminishing the population (1864- for the time being) in the tough Western town of Cactus Corners.
Popeye and Olive are taking in a variety show. Popeye enjoys the juggling seal very much, but he's followed by magician/hypnotist Bluto. Bluto spots Olive in her luxury box and immediate makes plans. First, he humiliates Popeye with a series of magic tricks. Next, he hypnotizes Olive, but while she's walking toward Bluto in a trance, Popeye points her the other way and goes after Bluto himself. Meanwhile, Olive has walked out the stage door and onto a construction site, and the boys race to save her. Popeye's efforts are hampered by Bluto's magic, like the instant brick wall he builds. Bluto awakens her, and she attacks him and then panics. Popeye throws her a hook to save her; it does, but it crashes through a window, bringing a piano (!) out with it. The piano crashes on the building, and Olive is catapulted by the strings to a distant platform. Another race to save her. As Popeye is trapped in a plummeting elevator, he breaks out the spinach.
Despite the title, the vehicles here are airplanes, not balloons. Bluto and Popeye are racing around the world; Bluto's got a sort of rocket plane, and Popeye's got a sad old prop model that has to be hand-started. He gets off to a bad start, as Bluto spins the prop, getting Popeye tangled up in it. This knocks him out; Olive puts him into his plane and gives him a push, and Popeye wakes up in the nick of time. Bluto stops off at the Eiffel Tower to woo a maiden; Popeye, with help from a lightning bolt, passes him. Bluto catches up again, and removes Popeye's engine. The plane crashes into the ocean, but fortunately, there's a case of spinach and a giant magnet nearby, so Popeye rebuilds the plane, using spinach cans to replace the missing pistons, and wins the race, as his spinach exhaust fries Bluto's plane.
Popeye and Bluto are lumberjacks who compete for the affections of their new cook, Olive Oyl.
Popeye and Olive are at the premiere of Popeye's new movie. He gets a little too wrapped up in the movie, interacting with it at various points, and even handing the screen version of himself a can of spinach. The movie itself is the story of Aladdin, minus the songs and about half the footage of the short it's cut from.
Heckle and Jeckle know something other animated toilers don't: they're cartoons. That means unlimited power, which they use to outwit a bulldog cop.
When a big bulldog is on the driving range, Heckle and Jeckle's treehouse is riddled with golf balls.
Heckle & Jeckle sneak into a prison to sell drills, hack saws and other tools to the inmates.
A few weeks before this epic was released, the two magpies had starred in 'Free Enterprise', a cartoon that ended with them both in prison. 'Out Again, in Again' begins like the latest chapter of a serial in progress, with a nasal-voiced narrator informing the audience that "in our last episode" Heckle and Jeckle were in prison, and then picking up the action from there.
Heckle and Jeckle, the always-talking Magpies, kick this one off by stealing a bowl of bones from Soupbone, an old hound dog. Soupbone raises some objections that leads to a fracas or two, with all hands ending up in a nervous place, and the two birds trying to rescue Soupbone from a padded cell.
Heckle and Jeckle wind up blowing out a tire on the car they are in and go up to a bear's cave to try and find a place to stay for the night.
We see a house cat next to an unoccupied birdcage as he pulls a canary feather out of his mouth. Hmm, I wonder what happened? Now he hangs up a sign: 'Songbirds Wanted'.
