"Daffy Duck and Porky Pig meet the Groovy Groolies" Discussion and Thoughts

[Greedy Smile]

Howdy my looney folks, The name's Greedy Smile. I'm new to the forums. This is something I thought of randomly. You remember that 1972 Looney Tunes filmation special?, Let's talk about it

 

[wiley207]

I find the special to be a real "so bad it's good" deal. It's admittedly more entertaining than "Good Night Elmer" or "Pre-Hysterical Hare" or "See Ya Later Gladiator," but still pretty corny. The plot feels like it's ripped off of "The New Scooby-Doo Movies" episode "Sandy Duncan's Jekyll and Hyde," taking place in a movie studio with all sorts of sets, a master of disguise antagonist who redeems himself at the end and his praised for his disguise and acting skills, along with the whole mystery motif. It's also similar to the Warner Bros.- Seven Arts Looney Tunes of the late 1960s, with the very similar art style and Bill Lava-esque music and Hanna-Barbera sound effects (albeit not as limited of a selection, but still lower-quality samples compared to what was heard in the actual Seven Arts cartoons), but of course the animation is WAY stiffer in comparison to the Seven Arts Looney Tunes having more movement. At times, Daffy Duck looks like he did in the aforementioned Seven Arts cartoons (LaVerne Harding or Ed Solomon must have animated some of those bits), while in other moments he looks like he did in some of the "Tiny Toon Adventures" episodes AKOM and Kennedy Cartoons animated (like the ending to "Who Bopped Bugs Bunny?"). The scenes where Sylvester and Yosemite Sam looked the most on-model, I'm betting Virgil Ross animated those scenes. Also, given the way several of the Looney Tunes characters sound, you can tell Mel Blanc wasn't having fun voicing the Looney Tunes characters for this project, likely not enjoying the plot along with how things worked at Phlegmation. Then of course there's how they sped up Daffy and Tweety's voices too much (Daffy sounds like his early "screwball" incarnation at times, while I know Tweety was also similarly sped up higher than usual for a short while in the early 1950s), along with Porky not being sped up at all. Of course, I made a fan edit of the special where I fixed the speed on Daffy, Porky and Tweety's voices, and I managed to make it more watchable in the process! Even Jerry Beck praised my edit!
With that said, at least Daffy was nicer for a change, with his personality being more akin to how he was in the late 1940s and early 1950s, after being especially bitter and greedy in the DePatie-Freleng/Format Films and much of the Seven Arts eras (save "Fiesta Fiasco" and "Skyscraper Caper" where Daffy was actually nice to Speedy).
But shouldn't this thread be in the Saturday Morning Cartoons sub-forum?

 

[cheril59]

You forgot one thing: Those canned sounds of a live audience of over a thousand adults. That grinds my gears!

 

[wiley207]

You forgot one thing: Those canned sounds of a live audience of over a thousand adults. That grinds my gears!

Heh, yeah, the laugh track is pretty loud and echoey, more so than the laugh track in Hanna-Barbera and DePatie-Freleng's output. I remember someone on YouTube commented the laughs sounded like bowling pins falling over!

 

[Edward Joseph]

I remember stumbling onto this one a couple of years ago and basically going "What the heck are the Groovie Ghoolies and why does this exist?". I eventually saw this one 2 years ago (my review here: https://letterboxd.com/mjkallamthanam/film/daffy-duck-and-porky-pig-meet-the-groovie-goolies/)
and....yeah, it was as bad as people have kept saying it was. The print I was watching was a reconstruction and the print quality significantly dropped in the second which only really added to it's "what the-"ness.

There are actually a couple of good bits here and there (my favorite being the "arrows hitting the typewriter" bit) and some actual good poses here and there and the live-action sequence is actually pretty good (but it might have not been made for the special so it probably doesn't count) but...that's really it. And for every single positive I can come up for this special, there's about 1000 more issues I can namedrop (As Wiley207 stated, one is that Mel Blanc's voice sounds terrible (his basterdization here being only matched by his role in those early 40s Columbia toons)). Though I will say that this is really just on par for 70s Filmation, it's just the presence of the WB characters that makes it worse (if they didn't appear in this at all, this just would have been seen as another crappy 70s cartoon and that would have been that but no...).

I feel bad for a lot of the former WB cartoons mainstays that worked on this mess; Len Janson (who wrote this), Dale Hale (doing the storyboard), Don Christensen (doing the art direction), Tom O'Loughlin and Boris Gorelick (doing the backgrounds), Ed Friedman, Larverne Harding, Virgil Ross and Hank Smith (doing the animation). I bet they felt like a rat working on trash like this. (Incidentally, Lou Scheimer actually worked on a WB Golden Age project as well...the Gateways to the Mind special in the late 50s!)

Weirdly, Chuck Jones made a similar special to this in 1978 with A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur's Court. It also has Daffy Duck in the King Arthur role and the pacing is also awful (though the animation at least is a lot more competent and well done than this). It's roughly on par with this special in terms of entertainment value.

For the record, according to Lou Scheimer this special came out due to their deal with WB (likely this one mentioned here: https://www.worldradiohistory.com/h...BC-IDX/71-OCR/1971-02-01-BC-OCR-Page-0051.pdf).

And here's also a 1994 Animato article talking about this one: Animato! Issue 29 (Summer 1994) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. Incidentally, a Newspaper from St. Joseph, Missouri from December 16th, 1972 calls this a "delightful animated feature"!

(By the way, if you want to see what a Filmation WB short probably would have looked like, watch Quacker Tracker from 1967. It contains similar Daffy Duck designs, that "feels like it's missing shots that never existed" syndrome where characters randomly teleport for no reason other than to save money, 2 animators that worked on this special (Ed Friedman and Virgil Ross) and is cowritten by a guy who did art direction on this special (Don Christensen). Though the backgrounds are much better and the gags are slightly funnier (though only slightly, it's still a 2/10))