Note: this post has been updated; see the bottom for more details.
When the Australian division of Warner Bros split the four disk Looney Tunes Golden Collection released in the United States into three separate collections (two single disks and a double disk), I was fairly philosophical. Even allowing for the fact that we missed out on some of the extra features the Americans got – notably The Boys From Termite Terrace, a documentary about the studio – I was just happy to be getting any release of these wonderful cartoons at all. It did cross my mind that the format of the release, and its cheap-looking cover art, would lead to poor sales for the DVDs. But I could enjoy great cartoons like Rabbit Seasoning, Rabbit of Seville, and Hair-Raising Hare on DVD at last. And there would be more to come, I told myself. So I have waited calmly ever since that release, in March 2004, expecting that the next volume would follow.
But now I’m getting alarmed. Wave 3 of the series is now on its way in the US, and there is still no sign from the local distributor of the excellent second wave that was released overseas in November last year. Has some local DVD guru, having released the first wave in this country without some of its extras and in ugly packaging, decided that there isn’t any demand in this country for the Looney Tunes DVDs?
(And while I’m asking, what has happened to the Disney Treasures series in this country? We got four volumes of that, in two waves of two disks, in May and August 2004. There are a lot of excellent disks in that series still to come, but the three month wait between the first and second waves has now extended to twelve months with no sign of the next. Perhaps that series, too, suffered from packaging: rather than the durable tin boxes Disney used overseas, the Australian release were released in those flimsy cardboard DVD cases distributors use to mark a “special” release, but which become tattered and broken once you open them a few times, making you wish for regular plastic packaging.)
If you’re wondering what you’re missing on the Looney Tunes front, here are a few of the great cartoons we are missing from the two waves of Looney Tunes disks not yet released here (this is a very select list, just picking up on some highpoints: fuller rundowns can be found here and here).
Wave 2
Rhapsody Rabbit (Friz Freleng, 1946) – Bugs plays the piano, with a mouse in the keyboard. A very minimalist concept, but a model for many musical cartoons that came later. Also the subject of the controversial “who – if anyone – copied from who?” debate when the Tom and Jerry cartoon Cat Concerto used the identical premise in the same year… and won the Academy Award for best short subject.
What’s Opera Doc? (Chuck Jones, 1957) – Maybe the most celebrated cartoon ever. It was the dying days of the studio and Chuck Jones’ unit stole production time from other shorts for this enormously ambitious cartoon that basically served as Bugs Bunny’s swan song (although he wouldn’t officially retire until several years later).
Beep Beep (Chuck Jones, 1952) – The second Road Runner cartoon, and maybe the funniest. Already Jones was reducing the series to its minimum elements: in one scene (echoing a gag from Fast and Furry-ous, the first Road Runner short) the Coyote and Road Runner go into a mine and are represented simply by dots on a diagram. It’s the chase cartoon at its most basic.
Porky in Wackyland (Bob Clampett, 1938) – One of the early classics of the studio, and one of the most surreal cartoons ever made.
You Ought to Be in Pictures (Friz Freleng, 1940) – An early Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Porky and Daffy enter the live action Termite Terrace and meet the producer of the Warner shorts, Leon Schlesinger.
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (Bob Clampett, 1946) – Definitely a candidate for the best cartoon ever made. Daffy Duck pretends he’s “Duck Twacy” and confronts a series of comic strip villains, including “Flat Top,” who launches planes off the top of his head, and “Rubber Head” who rubs Daffy out – literally. Dark, aggressive, and yet extremely funny.
The Dover Boys (Chuck Jones, 1942) – A very funny Chuck Jones cartoon that was also a groundbreaking experimentation in the use of limited animation for comic effect. Visually, this is amongst the most influential Hollywood cartoons.
Corny Concerto (Bob Clampett, 1943) – I pity those who only know the Warner cartoons of Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng, and have never seen the earlier Bob Clampett stuff. This is Clampett’s send up of Fantasia, with Elmer Fudd as Deems Taylor. It seems biting now: with the Disney studio reeling from its financial losses in the early forties, it must have seemed really harsh.
A Bear for Punishment (Chuck Jones, 1951) – One of Chuck Jones’ best occasional series, featuring the Three Bears, reaches its hilarious conclusion when the Mama and Junior Bear perform a father’s day pageant for the long-suffering Papa Bear. Includes a classic piece of comic animation when Mama Bear dances for Papa, and one of my favourite moments of dumbness by a cartoon character, as Junior Bear tries to read the label on a jar in the pantry: “G-U-N-P-O-W-D-E-R… duh… Tobacco!”
One Froggy Evening (Chuck Jones, 1955) – Overrated, but still great, morality play about a singing frog destroying the life of a construction worker.
Three Little Bops (Friz Freleng, 1957) – The last of Freleng’s many wonderful musical cartoons (in fact, his last really accomplished cartoon, period) is this jazzy retelling of the story of the three little pigs. The great narration – “He huffed and puffed / And bleeped and blooped / And by ten o’clock / was completely pooped” – was sung by Stan Freberg, who is still alive and contributes a commentary track on the DVD.
Wave 3
Wave 3 is slightly more cartoon buff-oriented, featuring a much higher quotient of the older cartoons, but still with plenty to keep the casual fan amused.
Homeless Hare (Chuck Jones, 1951) – Not Jones’ most recognised film, but one of his best. Bugs versus a construction worker. Contains an extremely ambitious set-piece, by Warner standards, when Bugs cops a steel girder to the face and does a dazed spacewalk through the construction equipment.
Hillbilly Hare (Robert McKimson, 1950) – McKimson’s only really excellent cartoon, climaxing with Bugs putting the villains through their paces in a very violent square dance.
Duck! Rabbit, Duck! (Chuck Jones, 1953) – The last of Jones’ “Duck Season / Rabbit Season” trilogy with Bugs, Daffy and Elmer. “Shoot me again, I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers and gunpowder and cordite!”
The Swooner Crooner (Frank Tashlin, 1944) – Strange cartoon in which a pair of roosters – one resembling Frank Sinatra, one resembling Bing Crosby – are enlisted to boost egg production by singing to hens: hinges on a dumbfounding visual gag, in which the hens swoon to the music and start spilling eggs out in enormous piles. (Note for fans of 1950s live-action comedy – yes, it’s the same Frank Tashlin).
Robin Hood Daffy (Chuck Jones, 1958) – Another late-period Jones classic. While you can see the cheapness starting to intrude, this nevertheless features several of Jones’ funniest and best remembered scenes, including Daffy’s attempt to swing on a rope (“Yoiks and away!”), Porky’s hysterical laughter at Daffy (“How jolly can you get?”) and the clever gag in which Daffy’s repeated humiliation is symbolised by his beak repeatedly popping up vertically.
A Gruesome Twosome (Bob Clampett, 1945) – One of Clampett’s early Tweety cartoons. Freleng later took the character over and cutened him up into the unbearably twee character we know today, but Clampett’s Tweety is a mean, sadistic little baby-faced freak.
No Barking (Chuck Jones, 1954) – They seriously should show this one in film schools to budding comedy directors: along with Tex Avery’s Bad Luck Blackie (made at MGM in 1949), it’s the classic cartoon to demonstrate the use of escalating variations on a repeated gag. In this case, the repeating gag is Frisky Puppy sneaking up behind Claude Cat, and barking at him so that he jumps in the air. Entirely animated by Ken Harris, there is no Jones cartoon that generates more laughs.
Rabbit Punch (Chuck Jones, 1948) – Bugs versus a boxer (not to be confused with Bunny Hugged, in which he is up against a wrestler).
An Itch in Time (Bob Clampett, 1943) – Also known as “the one with the dirty joke that they assumed would be cut out by the censor, but which wasn’t.”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. So what about it, Warner Bros?
Update, 11/8/05: This post has been largely overtaken by events, as Warner Bros have now announced the release of what appears to be Wave 2: see here. Credit where credit is due: the disks are fantastically priced at $15 each, meaning picking up all four compares pretty favourably to a purchase of a standard four disk box set. The main outstanding issues therefore are whether the presentation of the disks will be as poor as the last Australian round (hard to complain about at this price point) and whether we get all the extra features. We will clearly be getting many of them, but it appears we again may lose a few.