Cartoons About Cartoons (Part 34)

With Roger Rabbit’s success, a drastic change took place in the production of animation for both the big and small screen. While a few product-based franchises continued to hang on (such as Transformers, G.I. Joe, etc.), stars new and old began to pop up on the airwaves, having no particular product to push, but existing solely for the sake of their own humor. Producers, convinced that an audience interest in comedy animation was both back and widespread in demographics, began to be willing to dig into their pocketbooks to finance not only productions modeled in storylines from the leads of classic animations or comics of the golden era, but to give then enough of a budget that the confines of “limited animation” began to be removed. Increasingly, year after year, posing and fluidity of animation, detail of background work, and overall visual style tended to become better and better, and more expensive – but producers didn’t seem to care, as the investments were paying off, and the viewers flocked to the sets with renewed interest. It began to seem as though the dividing line between theatrical animation and television animation was breaking down, with the TV product looking more and more like the classic theatricals of the past. And the past certainly was not forgotten, as it seemed that for every new character who appeared, there also seemed to be an old one from the fond memories of our childhoods who would discover new life via a new television setting.

Solid franchises began to be established, particularly from Disney and Warner Brothers, mining the seemingly bottomless stables of characters within their ownership as either potential stars of their own series, or as valuable cameos to spice up episodes of other characters through surprise visits stirring up the brain cells of those of us with long memories of extended supporting casts and one-shot characters of the past. Disney would strike Scrooge’s gold with adaptations of its classic Carl Barks comics and new adventures focusing on Uncle Scrooge and Donald’s Nephews, in the ultra-successful “DuckTales”, then follow up with series vehicles for Chip ‘n’ Dale, Baloo and the Jungle Book gang, Goofy, and Winnie the Pooh, with still later franchises based upon its short subjects and feature characters – perhaps culminating in the return of Mickey Mouse and the gang to stardom in “Mickey Mouse Works” and “House of Mouse”. Warner (and in several instances, Steven Spielberg) countered with open use of the entire cast of Warner short subjects as supporting players in “Tiny Toon Adventures”, further discussed below, acquired rights to and re-initiated the franchises of Batman and Superman in a bold and graphic animation style not seen since the days of Max Fleischer, successful revival of Tom and Jerry in classy, nearly full animation and in multiple direct-to-video prestige productions, and further outlets for their characters of old, including numerous nearly-forgotten characters in cameo, in “The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries”.

Even Michigan J. Frog, a character remembered by avid cartoon fans from only a single theatrical appearance in Chuck Jones’ One Froggy Evening, would rise to become spokes-character for the WB network. An amazing Renaissance for the industry, which would further spill over into feature production, not so much in use of older characters, but in substantial increase in number of features produced and number of studios producing for the big screen. Eventually, this trend would lead to the establishment of a new category of Oscar presentations in 2002 – Best Animated Feature – a category which could not have readily existed in prior years, as there wouldn’t have been enough potential nominees available each year to make it a real contest.

We’ll begin this week with a Saturday-morning staple, Invasion of the Big Robots (from Film Roman’s Garfield and Friends, 12/2/89). A regular anticipated delight of “Garfield and Friends” was a different funny one-liner which Lorenzo Music would provide for each program in voice-over at the end of the opening credits – much in the manner of the changing Simpsons couch and blackboard gags. Some of these may have been lost to time during the show’s re-syndication, due to their topicality to the show’s original Saturday-morning time slot on CBS. One of these possibly-lost openings had the cat stating, “The Garfield Guarantee: No giant robots, and no aggravating little blue people” (referring to NBC’s biggest ratings-getter, Peyo’s “The Smurfs”). Oddly, however, within approximately one season, Garfield would break this guarantee, with an episode that begins with Garfield awakening in his cat box, and rising to saunter over to the kitchen for a snack. He notes something unusually dark and modernistic about the wall decor, and assumes Jon must have been redecorating. Suddenly, a strange voice is heard, and Garfield looks up, to find he is not in the kitchen at all, bit in the cockpit of a space ship, with a captain at the controls who looks like a cross between He-Man and any number of Hanna-Barbera or Marvel action heroes, named Star Wolf. He radios the leader of an alien planet about the impending attack of the Moto-Rods. Garfield realizes, in an attack of shock, that he has somehow awakened in the wrong cartoon. Star Wolf passes him, then stops to observe the strange orange creature with huge eyes. He assumes Garfield is a mutant gnome from the galaxy of Ra, come to spy on him and steal the energy jewel of Wizzig. Garfield attemts to explain that he is only a cat, in search of a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. “I’ll immobilize him with a polar laser orbitron”, says Star Wolf. “Hey! Geez, if you don’t have a BLT, just say so”, says Garfield in an attempt to pacify. But a blast from the hand-held device sends Garfield running. He calls out for any sign of Jon or Odie, then encounters a canine – but not the one expected. It is a realistically-drawn German Shepherd, wearing a rocket belt around its waist, and snarling fiercely. “You’re extremely not Odie”, responds Garfield. The cat runs to a launching area where a space capsule rests in wait for takeoff. Garfield slams the door of the capsule in the dog’s face, stunning him. Garfield then spots an assortment of buttons upon a glassy panel framed in lights, which he assumes is a candy machine, to at last provide him with something to eat. Instead, it is the master control for the capsule, through which Garfield inadvertently decodes the launching sequence. Star Wolf assumes the gnome is stealing the “Power Pod”, as the pod capsule blasts off out of a hatch, its destination set for the planet under attack.

A trio of giant robots, closely resembling the basic styles of Tranzor Z or Voltron, is laying waste to a city, picking up and smashing tall buildings. Garfield’s Power Pod enters the atmosphere, and makes a link-up as the head unit of the lead robot. (A funny touch is that the link-up is in much less complex fashion than most anime robots, the power pod containing extenders shaped like the connections of a giant electrical plug, which neatly fit into matching socket openings in the robot’s neck.) In a standard anime metallic sound-effect, the robot is energized, and under Garfield’s control. It marches forward, while Garfield shouts for it to stop – a command picked up through a microphone on the pod’s dashboard. The robot halts, and Garfield realizes who is in command. He issues an order to the other two robots: “Stand on one leg.” They obey. Garfield engages in a game of “Garfield says”, and soon has the other robots strutting and clucking like chickens. Producing a pair of drumsticks (not of the chicken variety) from nowhere, Garfield begins hammering-out a tap-dance rhythm upon the buttons of his control panel. The other robots lift a couple of roofs off the tall buildings to don as straw hats, and uproot some lampposts as canes, then perform a tap number that shakes the city buildings and stuns the populace, finishing a chorus of “Swanee River” with an “Off to Buffalo” exit. As for the robot he’s riding, Garfield spots another set of controls inside the pod, indicating that the robot is one of those type that can “transform” into other things.

At the press of a few buttons, the robot changes in shape to a vintage 50’s automobile, a giant refrigerator, a gumball machine, and finally a giant parking meter. The time on the meter is apparently set to expire, and the robot’s systems short circuit, causing an explosion. The power pod is blasted from the head of the robot, transporting Garfield into space again, and out of the galaxy. The pod comes to rest on a green, forest-covered world, where Garfield emerges, happy to be rid of the robots. That is, until he sees what he is now surrounded by. An assortment of adorable, fuzzy animals who appear to have stepped out of the frames of Walt Disney’s “Bambi”. Garfield is definitely in the wrong cartoon again. A Thumper-look alike informs Garfield, “We’re the cute creatures of the forest, and we’re going to teach you how to be nice to everyone and never, ever be mean.” “Giant robots! I want the giant robots back!”, shouts Garfield, racing back to the pod, and blasting off for parts unknown. “Hey, he’s not so cute”, says the rabbit, as he and the other animals watch the pod rise into the skies. “How’d he ever get his own show?”

Last week, we featured a select episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, Steven Speilberg’s unique concept-show about junior equivalents of the classic Looney Tunes characters learning the ropes from the old pros of the 1930’s and 40’s in official matriculation at a sort-of combination high-school and college known as Acme Looniversity. We’ll cover the series more in depth herein, beginning at the beginning, with The Looney Beginning (9/14/90), a premiere episode which was originally aired with great aplomb in prime time. Our story takes place in the Warner Brothers animation department. It is introduced by Bugs Bunny (who receives pay for his endorsement with a truck load of carrots and carrot products), then shows the tale as a flashback, watching all from one of his signature-pose framed cels on the wall. A young human animator (drawn himself in 2-D, not live action) is being chewed out in the boss’s office for the “garbage” suggestion of a show about a rich kid named Montana Max. The boss states an ultimatum that unless the animator comes up with a hit show by 9:00 a.m., he’ll be fired. The deflated man trudges back to his animation desk, having no idea where to start. Without knowing where his inspiration is coming from, the animator hears the voice of Bugs from the frame above: “Can’t go wrong with rabbits, doc.” The animator gives it a try. He draws a baby bunny even more squeezable than any of the “Baby Looney Tunes” who would appear some decades later, but when the drawing begins to move and speak, concludes it is so sweet, it will give people cavities, The creature is so lovably agreeable, it doesn’t even mind being crumpled up and thrown in the wastebasket. “Maybe something more manly”, thinks the animator, sketching a fierce macho rabbit who is the long-eared equivalent of Rambo. The menacing figure sets fire to the drawing paper with a flame thrower, and the animator has to toss a cip of coffee on it to put the blaze out. Never get him past standards and practices. “Split the difference”, thinks the young man, drawing in out first star, Buster Bunny. Buster tries out his feet, noting “Nice shocks”, then asks for some color. The animator adds splashes of color to Buster, winding up with a color scheme more garish than first models of Woody Woodecker. Lampooning the then-current craze of colorizing back and white films, Buster asks who the guy thinks he is, anyway – “Ted Turner?” Finally, Buster receives a simple blue and white color scheme, and a red shirt to please the censors. He then asks for a pal to be able to converse with, rabbit-to-rabbit. The animator creates Babs Bunny. “A GIRL??”, shouts Buster in dismay. “Welcome to the nineties”, responds Babs. Babs manages to impress, by doing impressions of Dolly Parton, and even Jessica Rabbit, turning Buster into an electric bolt with a kiss. “It’s a girl thing”, she explains as to the source of her talent. The two rabbits jump off the drawing paper and kiss the artist on the nose for creating them. But the artist is spooked by this, seemingly beginning to believe he is overworking and dreaming the whole thing, and tosses the drawing paper and rabbits into the wastebasket, leaving for the night with the remark that who is he kidding. He’ll never come up with a hit show by morning.

Buster and Babs emerge from the wastebasket, commenting that the man is throwing away his career – and their own. Babs produces an iron to get rid of the creases on herself, remarking, “I’m only 14 – and already I’ve got wrinkles.” Buster decides that it’s up to them to save the project, by coming up with a show themselves. Babs observes that network executives take years to develop a hit show, to which Buster responds that that should mean they’ll have one by the end of the next station break. True enough, when we return, they are already creating a landscape for the locale of their show – Acme Acres, and neighboring Wackyland (right out of Bob Clampett). They hold open auditions for wacky but lovable neighbors, ultimately accepting all applicants, who stampede into the background, “Give actors a break, and they’ll walk all over ya”, utters a trampled Babs. Then, the matter of arch-enemies and villains. On a high shelf in the animation room, they spot a mysterious Pandora-like box reading “Do Not Open”. A flip of the lid produces a plethora of ghouls, demons, mad doctors, etc., most of whom scatter. Buster peers into the box for what’s left over, finding suitable “pushovers”, Elmyra and Dizzy Devil. But they also find Montana Max, the rich kid who was promised the show in the first place. He announces intent to stage a hostile takeover, steals a tall stack of the rabbits’ scripts, kicks Buster and Babs off the animation desk, and leaps into the Acme Acres background, from which emerges flame, smoke, and explosions. Plucky Duck is thrown skyward, calling for a stuntman. Gogo Dodo, assigned to Wackyland, is also shot upwards, yelling in deep tones “Redrum! Redrum!” (Murder spelled backwards.) Buster and Babs are about to give up hope, when Bugs hops down from his frame to intervene. Bugs says it’s time for him to “loin” the kids something. He grabs the paintbrush, and adds a new feature to the Acme Acres background – an institute of higher education and low comedy, named Acme Looniversity. Taking the kids inside, Bugs introduces the faculty – all classic Looney Tunes of the past, ready to teach all their tricks. Most of all, Bugs personally gives the kids three principal rules of wisdom. Your adversaries have brains made of tapioca (demonstrated by flipping the lid on Elmer Fudd). Always eat your carrots. And, bad guys always fall for cheesy disguises.

Following Bugs’s advice, Buster and Babs appear at the front door of Max’s mansion – in poor disguises of Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd. Montana lets them enter as his idols, and shows off his dirty work in stealing the rabbits’ scripts. Buster and Babs carry away the whole stack as if reading them, but are discovered when Max finally notices their rabbit feet as they walk away. A madcap run takes place through Max’s booby-trapped house, with traps including giant chomping wind-up false teeth, boxing gloves, cannons loaded with sacks of money instead of cannonballs, and a giant rolling coin recalling Spielberg’s rolling boulder from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Monty is ultimately flattened by his own coin, and the scripts returned to the animation desk just in time for the returning animator to discover them in the morning. He presents the rabbits’ idea to the boss, and not only receives a green-light for the project, but a sack full of bonus money besides. He returns to his desk, where Babs and Buster wait on the drawing paper. The animator thanks them, and remarks that if there is anything he can ever do for them, just name it. Buster suggests, “Can you get us a creative by-credit on the show?”. The animator changes tune, remarking with mild sarcasm, “Yeah, in your dreams, pal.” Miffed, Buster amd Babs again leap off the paper, shouting their complaints, pulling the young man’s hair and ears. From his frame above, Bugs makes his own final remark. “Y’know, I think they’re loinin’!” The credits roll – and among them is a credit reading “Created by Buster and Babs”.

• “The Looney Beginning” is on Facebook here

Subsequent episodes if the series varied widely in content, taking on broad scopes of stories like most cartoon sitcoms. However, several episodes would return to themes of learning the arts of being a toon, or dealing with the insanities of a cartoon world. Her Wacky Highness (9/21/90) takes us on an extended visit into Gogo Dodo’s Wackyland, as Babs Bunny, feeling her uniqueness and stand-up comic personality aren’t properly appreciated in Acme Acres by her classmates, her mother, her principal, and especially Professor Elmer Fudd (who endures a chorus of the insulting “Elmer Fudd Blues” performed by Babs in the style of Elvis), decides to run away from home, to live in a place so completely out of control, she hopes she’s not bored. Gogo acts as tour guide to the land where everything seems to be a living bad pun. Perhaps the most notable gag is one fashioned as a direct homage to one of the most memorable gags of the Porky Pig original. As those who know Bob Clampett’s original cartoon will recall, the dodo bird pulls an entirely unexpected surprise upon Porky, by riding into the middle of a shot upon the Warner Brothers’ shield, firing a rock from a slingshot at Porky, then turning the shield around, and rising it backwards to near infinity point to make an escape. The Spielberg animators take the opportunity to update upon this gag in view of recent changes and corporate turnovers at the studio. In the last days of Warner theatrical shorts, a merger had resulted in an entire change of the shield design, replacing the W-B with the insignia, W7, signifying the merger of Warner Brothers and Seven Arts. By the time of production of Tiny Toons, Seven Arts had disappeared from the picture, and a white square with a blue W had been tried for awhile, but finally, the old shield design had been reinstated. So, what else would we see in Wackyland, but an anthropomorphic W-B shield chasing a W-square out of the place with a mallet. Babs can only comment, “Y’know, I think I’m gonna like this place.”

Babs seems so in tune with the style of Wackyland, she is appointed queen. A visit by her friends in an effort to see if she’s okay makes her a bit sad that they seem unlikely to visit her in this crazy place again. And eventually, the non-stop onslaught of bad jokes leads Babs to utter words she thought she would never say – that the Wackyland residents have to learn some self -control – just what everyone’s been telling her at Acme Acres. It turns out mentioning self-control is one of the highest offenses in the Wackyland Peanut Code – and Babs quickly moves from crowned royalty to Public Enemy No. 1. Eventually, after a wild chase, she escapes Wackyland with the help of her friends and a little riddle advice from Gogo. She seems to have turned over a new leaf upon her return home, although still hanging a note on Elmer’s rear reading “Laugh at the Monkey.” “I just can’t help myself”, Babs closes.

• “Her Wacky Highness” is on ok.ru

Prom-ise Her Anything (10/8/90) focuses on Prom Night at Acme Lu. Buster has been delaying calling Babs for a date – because he doesn’t know how to dance. However, he believes he has come up with an ace in the hole. Delving into the university film library, he has come up with a print of Bugs’s oldie, “Hot Cross Bunny”, and is viewing the sequence where Bugs, thinking he has a tough audience to please, gives them his “all-out job” by impersonating a manic scat dance of Danny Kaye (similar to that displayed by Kaye in his feature debut, “Up In Arms”). Bugs pops into the screening room to find out how the research is going. Discovering what Buster is watching, Bugs remarks, “Those old hoofer gags? I use them to fool the hunters. They ain’t exactly ballroom moves.” Buster insists one dance is the same as any other, and is sure he’s got the hang of it. Bugs senses trouble, and determines to keep an eye on Buster. At the prom, a unique feature of the Looniversity is the ladies’ powder room, where all the female characters take time out to primp. Each is able to receive a complete make-over while they wait, as an artist’s paintbrush apiece enters the shot for each one of them, adding more rouge, eye shadow, and fixing their hair. By the end of the episode. Buster finally displays his unique dance moves for the crowd. The routine lays a complete egg, and Babs feels she’s been made a laughing stock. But Bugs steps in, commenting that Buster can’t just start a hot new dance craze and leave them begging for more – and joins in the wild steps with Buster. Seeing Bugs’s approval and endorsement of the step, everyone suddenly deems Buster’s moves “cool”, and joins in the new fad. Buster whispers to Bugs that he’s saved Buster’s life, and asks how he can ever thank him. “Next time.” whispers Bugs, “swipe one of Daffy’s routines.”

• “Prom-ise Her Anything” is on ok.ru

Animaniacs (11/12/90), not to be confused with the subsequent series which borrowed the same name, is a sort of two-part story told as a single half-hour episode. The first half is a tutorial on the art of animation, much in the manner one might expect from a Disney or Walter Lantz television production. The second half is nearly a self-contained epic regarding the entries and prize-judging of the Acme Looniversity student film festival. The whole thing begins when Plucky Duck arrives at class late – way late – in fact, in finals week, in a class he’s failed to attend for the entire semester – Animation 101. Oh, well, he thinks. How hard can it be? He probably just has to watch a few stupid cartoons. Upon opening the class door, he walks in, to his shock, upon a flurry of activity at animation desks, painting desks, and camera mounts, and is informed by Buster that he has to MAKE a cartoon by tonight to receive a passing grade. Plucky has no idea of the process, and Buster realizes a crash course is in order. Utilizing a magic pen kept in a wall-mounted case for instructional use only, Buster sucks Plucky into the pen’s barrel, and releases him upon animation paper, where he is taught the ropes of all the various stages from storyboard to finished film. In a running gag, Plucky is informed that scripts have to be punched-up with periodic gags, referred to as “comedy beats”. Plucky is being drawn as a farmer, and thus the “beats” arrive as real “beets”, of huge size, falling from the sky, to land with crushing force on Plucky’s head. Buster also teaches Plucky how to flashback, so he can get shots of himself as a toddler for “The Plucky Duck Story”, but finds that Plucky continues to flash them further and further back in time, first to the middle of WWII, then to a prehistoric scene out of “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Buster ditches Plucky, returning to the present, then realizes he never taught Plucky how to flash forward. Racing to the school library, Buster opens a volume on Prehistoric Life, and finds Plucky trapped in an illustration inside, as an amoeba. A suck by the magic pen, and Plucky is removed from the illustration and ejected as his old self – with less than a quarter-hour until showtime for the student films.

In the faculty lounge, Bugs presides over the Looney Tunes faculty, reminding them that the student film festival is tonight, and volunteers are needed to judge. The characters beat a hasty stampede for the exit, the only two not escaping being Porky Pig, who is an easy target for Bugs to catch by the tail, and Daffy Duck, who is trampled at the doorway. Bugs reminds them that if they don’t judge, “Time-Warner will yank our tenure.” The three try to make the best of it, setting up a bed in the balcony in case they fall asleep (though Daffy still tries to escape for a previous engagement in Tibet). Buster appears on stage in the theater as master of ceremonies, introducing the respective films. And what of Plucky? He’s still sweating over a drawing board, hoping to churn out his masterpiece before the show is over as last entry. The films range widely in quality and style. Elmyra submits a scribbly doodle about squeezing animals until they stay, prompting Daffy to remark to Bugs that watching these films must be Bugs’s idea of revenge for all those Rabbit Season signs Daffy always posts. Hamton Pig’s idea of a horror flick presents no monster at all, merely showing Hamton awakening from a bad dream, then going back to sleep again. Dizzy Devil’s “performance piece” has him eating the world. “Shoot me. Shoot me now!”, shouts Daffy. Montana Max’s richly-animated Christmas Special (richly animated because he paid for it to be made) depicts himself as Santa Claus, taking evil revenge on Buster and Babs. The film is deliberately broken in mid-projection by unseen hands in the booth, and Monty is tossed out on his ear, his film following to land in his mouth, despite Monty’s shouts of “Censorship”. Everyone expects a wacky film from Gogo Dodo, but instead he presents an extended live-action clip from a 1950’s Joe McDoakes comedy, as his study in “realism”. Daffy and Porky complain to Bugs that they’ve had all they can take, as old-school toons have only a six-minute attention span. Bugs reassures them that there are only two entries left to go. But the penultimate entry is that of Shirley the Loon – a tone poem entitled “Song of the Loon”, which she advance-apologizes had to be cut to fit within the evening’s program. However, she thinks it holds up well at its reduced running time of 17 hours and 34 minutes Even Bugs reacts with an ah-ooga shock take, and the three judges race for the exit door. However, they don’t get far, as Shirley has electrically-charged the doorknob with a powerful automotive battery.

When Shirley’s Salvador Dali-style epic finally ends, the judges’ eyes are spinning, and Porky can’t stop endless stuttering. Plucky, on the verge of completing his life story, has meanwhile been told he’ll have to cut his film due to Shirley’s running long. Daffy’s final cur is thus reduced to one shot – one of the flashback scenes of him wailing as a toddler, with “The End” superimposed over it. The judges’ praise is unanimous. “It’s magnificent!” “It’s stupendous!” “It’s SHORT!” Plucky wins, and is carried on the shoulders of the faculty through the corridors. When Plucky asks what’s his prize, Bugs responds, “Ya get to take the course over again, on account of ya skipped it the foist time.” Plucky, now locked in the classroom, remarks through the doorway window that this is the kind of comedy beat he can do without – and promptly receives a shower of beets on his head.

• “Animaniacs” is at https://m.ok.ru/video/

Wild Takes Class (11/15/90) was a shorter episode providing the closing chapter of a two-episode show entitled “Inside Plucky Duck”. Bugs acts as professor of a basic class in toon wild takes, demonstrating how to express emotion with such moves as the Avery Ah-ooga, the Friz Frizzle, and others. Bugs emphasizes that you have to learn the basics first to master wild takes. However, Plucky Duck things Bugs’ moves are mere child’s play and too embarassingly simple to be bothered with. He instead idolizes Daffy Duck, who teaches the advanced class in another room. He has been peeking in on the duck’s lectures, and trying out Daffy’s moves on the side, ignoring Bugs’s warnings to learn the basics first. He attempts to show off what he has learned from the duck to Buster, climaxing his exercise with a Clampett Corneal Catastrophe – a move that pops his whole torso into the form of a huge staring eyeball, with only feet otherwise visible. Buster has to admit he finds the move impressive – but quickly notices that there was wisdom in Bugs’s teachings, when he sees that Plucky can’t snap out of it into his old self. The duck remains stuck as a walking eyeball, despite Buster’s tugging at the only thing around to tug at – Plucky’s eyelash. Buster prods Plucky along to the school nurse’s office, where Elmyra is helping out for the day. Elmyra has no solutions except to attempt to hug and squeeze the eyeball until the duck inside pops out. Buster reads from a medical book on the shelf that toons stuck in wild takes usually don’t snap out of it unless they are able to calm down. “This might take a while”. concludes Buster.

Buster attempts to roll Plucky home, spinning him in a sideways roll on the ground. Plucky calls for him to stop, claiming he has something in his eye, and they find that he has flattened Dizzy Devil over his eye lens as if running him over with a steamroller. Babs happens along, and Buster tries to hide Plucky by bouncing upon him as if he were a trampoline. Babs quickly detects the deception, and bursts out laughing at Plucky’s plight, rubbing it in by also reminding them that the class photo is going to be shot today. Plucky tries to walk out, but Buster insists the picture won’t be the same without him, and hangs onto Plucky’s legs. Plucky stumbles, bouncing downhill toward the Looneversity. As the eyeball approaches the window of the faculty loinge, Bugs, inside with Daffy, asks “Did you ever have the feeling you was being watched?” The eyeball crashes through the window and over their heads, and all that Daffy can do in response to Bugs’s question is shake his head no. Buster and Plucky slip on a corridor floor just waxed by Pete Puma, and slide into the middle of the class photo shoot, Plucky somehow popping back to normal just in time to get his picture taken.

• “Wild Takes Class” is at https://m.ok.ru

Staying for the remainder of this week’s survey with Warner product, a Bugs Bunny TV special produced Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers (8/25/92 – Greg Ford, Terry Lennon, dir.), Bugs faces a typical day in his studio career, pestered by the bullets of Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam, and the war of words over what season it is with Daffy Duck. However, something new has been added – the appearance of strange oversized carrots with long blue-green stems at every location – fallen from space. As Bugs leaves the scene of each event, the carrots take on a glow, and work their power on the arch-enemy Bugs has left behind. Next day is decidedly different in Bugs’ life. Elmer Fudd looks like a cardboard cutout with a ventriloquist-dummy’s jaw. Bugs notices something different about him – especially that he appears (gasp!) BADLY DRAWN! On top of that, the “new” Elmer won’t even fire a rifle – and only wants to make friends, and talk Bugs into taking one of those strange looking carrots home. The same story with a flat-looking doppelganger of Yosemite, who’s so anxious to make friends and talk Bugs into taking a carrot that he willingly falls off a cliff without being hoaxed into it. Daffy is drawn even worse, with segmented features that don’t quite join up, body parts that deliberately disappear for a few frames, then reappear like an unchecked animation error, and features that change inconsistently in every scene, such as one mode with a wind-up key in his back, and another with his bill converted into the “Synchro-Vox” superimposed human lips of a Clutch Cargo cartoon! Bugs finally relents to get these aggravating pests off his back, and brings a carrot home.

While he lays in bed sleepless, puzzling over the “unreasonable facsimiles” he encountered during the day, the carrot by his bedside splits open, revealing a bubbling steaming primordial ooze inside, from which emerge thick-outlined blue-gray arms and legs. A tap on his shoulder – and Bugs meets another badly drawn duplicate of himself, wielding an axe. A strike of the axe chops his bed in two, and Bugs runs out of his rabbit hole and over the hills. An iris out, and a “That’s All Folks” sign fades in. Like Screwy Squirrel, Bugs walks out in front of it, stopping the proceedings. “Ya didn’t think I’d let it end that way!”. he complains, and pulls aside the backdrop like a curtain to get to the bottom of the duplicates. Returning to each of his adversaries, he spots small labels on each reading “Made on the planet Nudnik”. He decides that if he rids the world of the duplicates, maybe the originals will return. Capturing each of the duplicates in a bag marked “Pale stereotypes”, he ties the bag to a skyrocket and lights the fuse. The rocket carries the bag beyond the milky way, and past a sign warning they are approaching a black hole. The rocket disappears into such cavernous hole – which morphs into giant human-style lips in mid-air (closely resembling those used in Bob Clampett’s “Tin Pan Alley Cats”), which burp, and say, “Pardon me”. Next day, everybody’s back, and taking it on the chin again from Bugs’ typical antics. Bugs’ notes how much he missed everyone trying to kill him, and observes, “It’s a Wonderful Life!” For a final closing gag, the classic Looney Tunes drum of the 1940’s appears, with a terribly drawn duplicate Porky bursting out of the drum, only to have Bugs appear onstage, cast him aside, and replace him with the real Porky for the “Th-th-th-That’s All. Folks!”

• “Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers” is on Toontales

Stay Tuned (Warner, 8/14/92) is primarily a live-action parody of old movies and television, starring John Ritter and Pam Dawber. It is presented with a horror twist, as Ritter is sold a satellite dish system bringing in 666 channels of exclusive broadcasting, not realizing the salesman is an emissary of the devil, and that the dish is a device for sucking in souls. Captives of the system have to escape a gauntlet of changing channels, in a broadcast network known as “Hellivision”, each program fraught with death perils. If they survive 24 hours, rhey are freed – if not, they lose their soul to the devil. The highlight of the film is an animated segment directed by Chuck Jones, entitled “Robocat”, in which Ritter and Dawber enter the workd of classic animation, finding themselves transformed into the form of animated mice. Ritter at first thinks this might be okay, as nobody ever dies in a cartoon – or do they? The home’s owners have just acquired the latest in pest-control devices – a robotic cat, realistically structured and jointed but constructed of shining steel instead of fur, with glowing red eyes, and a seemingly limitless arsenal of destructive weapons. The aroma of a tray full of donuts attracts Ritter to the kitchen table. The cat appears, flinging open a doorway, and a megaphone emerges from its throat, announcing “Warning! Warning! You are trespassing in a human habitation. The penalty is death.” Ritter’s mouse face falls entirely at this pronouncement of doom. He slides down the donut pile and off the table onto the floor, using a donut tightened around his waist. He is momentarily pinned to the floor by its weight, as the cat produces a revolver out of its back, and begins shooting away. “My doctor was right”, says Ritter, “Donuts will be the death of me.” Popping loose from the donut just in time, he and Dawber climb to a kitchen counter and hide inside a toaster. The cat’s paw enters the frame, pushing the toaster’s handle down, to turn the device red hot. It pops Ritter and Dawber into the air, slightly charcoaled, while the cat waits below with open jaws. The mice fall into the cat’s mouth, but their heat soon turns the cat’s head as fiery-red as the toaster. The cat spits them out, into another room, then follows. He at first can spot no sign of the mice, but finds them hiding behind the painted images of the old farm couple in a wall-mounted duplication of the famous “American Gothic”. The cat levels a flame thrower at the painting and opens fire. Not only the mice react in shock-take, but the farm couple as well, as the flames shoot over their heads, burning the painted farmhouse down. The mice make a retreat to the bathroom, where the cat sees two mice-head silhouettes visible just over the edge of the bathtub. The heads are fakes, constructed of bath balls stuck together with toothpicks, and the cat fires a ray-gun blast at the bathtub, partially blowing away the edge of the tub. The cat curiously peers in for what is left of his victims, but Ritter and Dawber sneak up behind him, armed with an aerosol can and a lit match.

They light the spray into a flame thrower of their own, roasting the cat’s rear, and causing him to leap into what water is left in the tub. Then, Ritter and Dawber push from a counter a plugged-in hair dryer into the tub (Dawber pausing to caution the kids in the audience not to try this at home). The cat momentarily sizzles in the electrical short circuit, then half-falls out of the tub, its eyes popping out on springs, and parts askew everywhere. A readout on the robot’s back lights, reading “Activate 2nd Life”. With that, a magnet on a pivoting pole emerges from the robot’s back, pulling all the strewn loose parts together, until the cat is reassembled good as new. Ritter and Dawber have by now taken refuge in a doll house, where they are challenged at the front door to surrender by the robot, multiple weapons drawn against them. In an idea borrowed from Jones’ original Warner cartoon, “Mouse Warming”, the mice make an escape between the cat’s legs, driving in a mouse-sized toy car. Dawber spots a mousehole with TV static visible within – the portal for an exit to another channel. She yells for Ritter to turn, but Ritter steers erratically in his haste, tossing Dawber through the portal, but missing the opening himself. The cat is quick to produce in one paw a steel plug in precisely mousehole shape, which he rivets into the wall with a small rivet gun to plug the opening. Ritter comments this is one clever pussy, but also observes that he’s seen enough cartoons that he should know how an animated character would deal with such a situation. Of course! Post an urgent order by mail to the Acme Company. A doorbell ring announces a special delivery which the cat answers, revealing – a robotic bulldog. Now it is the cat’s turn to have his face fall, as the entire house is seen from the outside, first whirling, then stopping with most of its shingles, windows and panels in a state of disarray, then exploding entirely. All that is left are a few sticks of furniture, and a few baseboards. Among them is the baseboard with the mousehole – with the riveted plug still appearing entirely intact. Ritter emerges alive from under one of the items of furniture, and tugs and strains at the metal plug to no avail, it appearing to be holding firm. He moans that now he’ll never get out of here – until the plug, for no apparent reason, drops loose like a drawbridge onto his back, opening the portal. Ritter happily pops up and back to normal, revving up for a quick exit, but not before saying to the audience, “Th-th-th-That’s all, folks!”

Next Week: Some TV input from Disney, and more lunacy from Warner and others.