This short is beautiful. It looks great. The Wildcat drawings are neat. But it's a Pepe cartoon so it's worn out its welcome after about two minutes.
This was shown endlessly on the Bugs Bunny show when I was a kid. So much so that I am still kind of tired of it. But, it's probably the funniest that Granny has ever been. The way she runs in a circle laughing, and the way it sets up Bugs to imitate her is fun. When Granny blasts Sam with a shotgun through the keyhole and then again once he climbs the ladder, the impact of the gunshots are sharp. And speaking of that, when Bugs throws Granny's sofa, refrigerator, kitchen sink, and vault off of the balcony, you can really feel the weight when they crush Sam as he catches them.
This would get a higher rating, but the animation is pretty stiff at times. There doesn't look to be a lot of exaggerated or "stretchy" drawings.
This is another high energy Clampett short. Daffy is plain insane, and Mr. Meek proves to be a worthy opponent. The headless ketchup gag is still shocking (and "bloody") and Daffy serving "swamp water" has always tickled my funny bone. And speaking of bones, in that very scene, it's weird that a bunch of chicken bones share a plate with a partially eaten donut. I haven't done any freezing of frames while watching this cartoon, but I'll bet there are some wild drawings given how action-oriented it is.
The stereotypes and war time propaganda are what they are. But this newsreel style format for presenting gags almost never works. Knowing enough about World Wars is helpful to grasp where the creators of this cartoon's heads were at. You be the judge as to whether or not there's ever justification for this sort of thing. Ultimately, it's so focused on its subject matter that it will never get past being a relic of its time.
I don't recall ever seeing this one. It's pretty good, not great, but I'm not really a Granny/Tweety fan to begin with. I actually thought all of the gags with explosives were funny in that Looney Tunes violent sort of way. The timing is always great with Freleng.
This is a pretty funny cartoon and is one of the last Black & White Looney Tunes. It features Porky and Daffy checking out of a hotel, but Daffy loses all of their money while gambling. This features some great animation. Tashlin's shorts are becoming quite angular by this time and its very retro looking with some great camera angles. Daffy's nuts here, which is always a good thing.
I keep running into cartoons that I have never seen before. This is a Norm McCabe-directed short featuring a kangaroo and a couple of Scottish rabbits. If not for a few interesting camera angles, the first half of this is entirely disposable. But then when the rabbits set up a Wile E. Coyote style contraption that launches the kangaroo into the air, things get wild. The whole short turns into a crazy WWII action sequence with the kangaroo inadvertently bombing Tokyo. There were some interesting backgrounds which would have been more noticable if the cartoon weren't black and white. I ended up liking this despite the slow start and the fact that the kangaroo is a cheap copy of Disney's Goofy.
This is one of the greats and one of my favorites. Cecil Turtle is so cool, and his voice is perfect. I love the look of Bugs when he is pissed while watching the movie of his race against Cecil. His pained grimace and his huge, full set of teeth are amazing. I'm trying to take notes while watching this cartoon and it's useless to call out things I love because the whole thing is perfect. Bugs has lost all sanity by the end of the short with the rabbits committing mass suicide. The "ehhh, NOW he tells us!!" is a shocker but it's great. This is Clampett teetering on the edge of directorial control.
What a strange cartoon. Not a lot makes sense, but I really enjoyed how crazy (to almost Clampett levels) it was. The WWII references are a product of their time, but that's not the primary source of the wackiness. There are some neat directorial moments; an over-the-shoulder shot when the spy is on a bridge, and a really tight closeup of Porky's panicked face come to mind. The gag with the spy failing twice to enter a small opening to a cave cracked me up. It was probably his reactions as it was slightly out of character, which is a complement because his character traits were actually established so quickly.
This one is a kind of travelogue or something like that. There's a narrator that sets up or talks during each gag. The jokes are pretty obvious and it's a lot like some of those MGM/Tex Avery "Farm of Tomorrow", "T.V. of Tomorrow" shorts. I enjoy the Mel Blanc voice work which is typically energetic and wonderful. This is a different looking McKimson-directed short. I'm not schooled up on UPA cartoons, but this seems influenced by something outside of the normal Looney Tunes stuff.
Another Chuck Jones cutesy short, but this one follows a very determined squirrel and his battle against a coconut that defines the term "tough nut to crack". The best sequence is when the squirrel figures that the coconut will crack open if he takes it to the top of the Empire State building. Unfortunately, he skips the elevator and rolls the coconut up the stairs, one at a time. Earlier, he tries to use a jackhammer to open up the coconut, and it's funny that he knows how to use that but not how to press an elevator button. But that's cartoon logic for ya.
A story about one of the Observers who has had feelings for a woman since she was a girl. He saves her from a disaster because he believes that she is special. It's a pretty touching episode, actually. The paintings and pictures containing past sightings of Observers at famous historical world events look kind of dumb, though. Walter has some continuing close connections to the Observers that he's not talking about.
This is a lot like the X-Files episode "Pusher". It's got a twist that makes it better because it's not really anything new from a story perspective. It's not surprising that Massive Dynamics is involved and didn't tell the Fringe team.
This was pretty original. The entity possessing the cosmonaut was an above average protagonist. The effect of people turning to ash was nothing short of an amazing effect. The variety of the one-shot episodes that don't have anything to do with the continuing storyline are inconsistent but are always entertaining to watch.
This is about a doctor who implants a computer interface into his insomniac patents' thalamus, and feeds off of their nightmares, which he can induce at will. This is pretty bland, except for the demon hallucination at the beginning of the story.
It was weird to see Elmer Fudd actually starring in his own cartoon. The concept of Elmer starting a war with ants is so different. The ants were cool and Elmer was downright nasty. Even though he spends a lot of his time in other cartoons shooting at Bugs and Daffy, he seems particularly vicious in this.
Chilly Willy looks a lot different in this first cartoon than he will in future shorts. His eyes are smaller and his beak is bigger. This is enjoyable and interesting to see the character in its earliest version, but the Tex Avery Chilly shorts are much better and loads funnier.
Not only is the almost 3-D animation at the beginning of this cartoon amazing, the action throughout that features a dogfight between Bluto and Popeye in their airplanes is terrific. Not to mention how great Popeye's mumbling comments are. This is such a great cartoon!
Well, an extra point to this episode because it's the first that doesn't feature the Herculoids fighting yet another invading villain and henchmen. Zandor and crew are returning a lost Dorgyte to the "dark side" of the planet and they run into a bunch of hostile species of being on the way.
How does Dorno immediately know a "mole ship" when he sees one? This time, the bad guy is Markon (the Mole), and Zandor says that Markon is up to his old tricks. Zandor has a reputation because all of these villains invade his planet. They really hate the guy. There's a lot of repeated animation in this, it's almost like watching a clip show at times. These Herculoids cartoons are packed with action, though. I'm sure I saw these as a child, but it must have been in reruns years after they originally aired.
A Freleng-directed short that watches very much like it's going through the motions. Although the gag with Bugs blowing out the bomb's fuse is good, especially the timing as Sam runs it back towards the tree but it explodes halfway there.
This is just unbridled Clampett energy. Tweety is the coolest he will ever be. Catstello is funny but, WOW!...he is so loud. This is a great, and I think often forgotten cartoon.
Features the continuation of Rocky and Bullwinkle's "Jet Fuel Formula". Fractured Fairy Tales has a story of "Puss and Boots". Mr. Peabody and Sherman drop in on Napolean and swipe something from him that reveals the source of one of his traits.
This is like watching a variety show. It's the first episode and it'll be fun to see how the show evolves. I saw a lot of this show as a child, but I'm sure there's much more that I've forgotten than what I'll remember. The two main segments feature a continuing storyline starring Rocky and Bullwinkle. "Fractured Fairy Tales" spoofs on Rapunzel, "Peabody's Improbable History" stars Mr. Peabody and Sherman hopping through time while Mr. Peabody simulaneously adopts Sherman, and featurettes star Bullwinkle as a poet, a magician, etc. The most enjoyable things are the quick-fire jokes that hit and miss equally and the voice work, especially Bullwinkle and Mr. Peabody. The simple and often sloppy animation is endearing.
They used to play "Muscle Tussle" a ton on the old Bugs Bunny/Road Runner show. Daffy's awesome in this, even though McKimson tones him down, but Daffy's such a sucker and an overconfident one at that. The chain-chewing teeth gag is an all-time classic. Nice touch when Daffy spits his teeth out and some of them have gold fillings. The "one cheeseburger...and hold the onions" bit is a riot, too. Love when Daffy is posing and flexing, and his girlfriend asks him if he's got a stiff neck. Daffy deserves that kind of subtle abuse.
Wally Walrus is in top form here. He's looking for a lady friend, and of course, Woody's planning a little revenge for getting kicked out of Wally's apartment building. Woody dresses in drag as a way to get back at Wally. The animation in this is way better than the later cartoons of the series. In some places, like early in the short when Wally is dancing, it's practically comparable to the same era of Disney shorts. Wally's voice is tremendous here. Woody is Bugs Bunny-like with his tormenting of Wally.
Wow! It's another one that I can't ever remember seeing before. There is so much weirdness going on in this cartoon. It's probably one of the wildest, fastest, loudest shorts that I've seen. The Native American crashing his bicycle and later crying because Daffy "bwoke his widdle hammer" in the Petrified Forest...the drawings during that moment look very odd; almost incomplete, actually.
The ending when Daffy's trailer is stripped of its tires, and the brave gives them back to Daffy because they "no fit putt-putt"...it's like it's unfinished. The brave kind of glides over to Daffy and when he talks his mouth doesn't move. It's just dubbed in or something.
I'm confused about the whole cartoon, but I still loved it. Daffy's two or sometimes three-string guitar with four tuners., the maiden's thick Brooklyn accent, the horse breaking the fourth wall and asking if there's a first-aid student in the house, well, it's a bonkers cartoon.
Now matter how legendary Frank Tashlin is, the sort of name-dropping or puns that these cartoons consist of are just not for me. I'm sure they were very popular in their time. There's lots of clever ways that the magazines are tied together to form what little story there is, but it's just not funny. I also have similar problems with most of the non-funny cartoons of the 1960s.
Sylvester isn't quite as funny in this, probably because he doesn't say much. He's mostly trying to escape both a bulldog and a rooster. The voice work is really good on the bulldog and rooster, though. The "AAAAA SHADDAP!!!!" line at the beginning is the only thing Sylvester actually says and it's the best moment in the short. Tweety has a few things to do for once as he scratches around the chicken coop with other chicks. When the bulldog imagines a cartoon bubble with Granny blasting him with a shotgun, it's delightfully violent stuff.
This is on Jerry Beck's list of 100 Greatest Looney Tunes. It's crazy Clampett and I think it's the first ever Looney Tunes cartoon in color. But it's still pretty dull. It's just about a horned up tom cat. The drawings are really good but the gags are nothing special. I'm likely wrong about this one, but it just doesn't work too well for me.
