Rating: 4/7

Haunted house cartoon that's at least slightly better than Ghost Wanted. Two dogs on the run from the dog catcher (running in-front-of his truck no less), end up in a haunted house while the dog catcher drives off into the distant scenery on a curving little path. Was that a botched opportunity for a gag or what? If this had been directed by Friz Freleng, the path that took the dog catcher out of the cartoon would have been about as straight-forward as a ball of yarn and would have a “shortcut” sign posted at its beginning and would have led the truck right back to the haunted house.

I can still remember the cartoon only vaguely. Admittedly it has a cool atmosphere. Based on the beginning you’d expect the house to be mock-creepy, but instead it’s light-heartedly surreal, accentuated by Woody Woodpec – sorry, by the non-Bugs bunny. Jones uses the same laugh cycle that Ben Hardaway and Cal Dalton would use for Woody Woodpecker (I wonder how many people are aware that Woody Woodpecker was a by-product of the process that created Bugs Bunny?).

As the dogs walk around, they get separated by a magic shrinking doorway that’s fun to watch, but doesn’t make for a funny gag. The bigger dog is antagonized by the rabbit, while the smaller one is bothered by a living rope. The rope, with the aid of a magic wand, does things like pour water on the small dog and drop vases on his head, and then turns the shattered pieces into birds. A not uninteresting demo of the crazy things you can do with animation, but nothing else. The only gag in here that’s strikingly creative is the dog hiccupping balloons, which gets sillier and sillier.

Meanwhile, the rabbit does all kinds of tricks to annoy the bigger dog, which eventually leads to a door gag where the two canines are reunited. This might be the first of Chuck Jones’ infamous door gags, but there’s nothing as blatantly stupid as placing the door in an open field where the victim could just walk around it. The cartoon ends with the rabbit thrown in a fishbowl, but not before a really obvious gag where he gets stuffed in a trunk only to reappear to bother the dog.

Points added on for not being TOO boring (it’s a relatively speedy watch), but this middle-of-the-road score is the best I can give it. I do like that balloon gag a lot, though. It was cleverly expanded upon. Doesn’t this feel like a rip of Avery’s style? The way the film cuts between the two dogs reminds me of the cuts in his documentary cartoons without the narration. Heck, even the ending is just like that of most early Avery films.

DAFFY DUCK AND THE DINOSAUR

Rating: 4/7

It’s refreshing to see a Chuck Jones cartoon that uses the original incarnation of Daffy. In fact, this is too close to an Avery-imitation for my liking. That wouldn’t be a bad thing in itself if Chuck could pull off an accurate imitation, but he can’t. STOP TRYING TO IMITATE AVERY, CHUCK! Oh wait, he did.

There are too few gags, and what's more, the development and timing for some of them are really off. When the caveman throws his boomerang, it takes too long to turn around. There’s a shot of it flying through the screen for what feels like 30 seconds, and it wears out its welcome. It’s pretty funny what happens when it hits the dinosaur, but due to so much of the focus being put on Daffy you expect to follow him running from the booomerang the entire time, the sudden pan to the dinosaur is a bit awkward.

The caveman flying out of the water could have been a good gag, but the apathetic handling made it ineffective. He dives in from a very obvious side-view and Daffy throws him out by holding a “Absolutely No Swimming!” sign. If I had the misfortune to come up with such a bad Avery imitation, I too would probably struggle to become the third or fourth greatest cartoon director of all time out of shame.

And of course, there’s scene after scene of Daffy leading the caveman on with all those signs. Which is boring, but at least Chuck got some practice so he’d know how to use sign gags later. But one sign after another saying “50 ft to duck”, “25 ft to duck”, etc. just isn’t funny.

Even though all the botched gags make watching this a bit of a downer, it’s redeemed by bits and pieces that happen to work (like the above mentioned dance the dinosaur does when hit by the boomerang). The caveman, based on Jack Benny, is a fun personality, even if he’s too nihilistic to play off Daffy (he barely reacts to any of Daffy’s antics). And the ending gag with the giant blow-up duck is quite fine.

I can only enjoy this every once-in-a-while. It’s hardly as good as any Avery Daffy Duck cartoons, but it’s worth it just for seeing Chuck do the original Daffy.

NAUGHTY BUT MICE

Rating:

OLD GLORY

Rating: n/a

Unrated because this is ‘educational’ (Political indoctrination, really). This was made during the era of Jim Crow, so forgive me if I wince at Uncle Sam emphasizing this is ‘The Land of the Free’. Even today, I see this as self-congratulatory propaganda. I believe in counting my blessings, but I don’t need or want to hear how great we are. Just keep in mind that if we were living in some place other than America, such as Iraq, Palestine, East Timor, Chile, Uzbekistan, or almost any country south of the Mexican border, we could be suffering as a direct or indirect result of something the American government does (How am I supposed to feel about a democracy where eight consecutive presidents have sold weapons to a regime in Indonesia that killed over a million people? A regime that was overthrown thanks in no way to the United States, which supposedly invaded Iraq to bring freedom to the Iraqis? Cripes I could go on about this all day).

Okay, so I don’t like it in principle. Is it a good film? Nah, it’s really no better than any early Chuck Jones work. I gave high ratings to Scrap Happy Daffy, Blitz Wolf, and several others that glorify the American military even though they’re contrary to my politics, because these are genuinely funny and the jingoism is intelligently worked in. This is sappy and sentimental in a way that turns me off, and that bit about expanding westward could have been about Germans expanding eastward. Well, the result was roughly the same, wiping out whole Indian nations and such. ExcepttheAmericansgotawaywithitandtheGermansdidn’t. *Cough*

Okay, I’ve taken all the shots I needed, now I can name the 2.5 scenes I like in here: Patrick Henry shouting ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ and the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. These moments stir some emotion in me, though the rest of it leaves me cold. And Porky looks like he should be on a package of Flavorice. What’s with the bulby cheeks?

SNOW MAN'S LAND

Rating: ()

LITTLE LION HUNTER

Rating: 5/7

The first of Jones’ cartoons to bring something completely new to the artform. It’s amazing I’m giving it the score I am when more than half of it makes me zone out, but the other half is so amazingly well-done, not to mention unprecedented, that I feel comfortable rating it so high.

You’re not likely to see it on television, either. Inki is an African hunter with a bone in his knotted hair looking for something to eat. The first part has him hunting animals as usual until he comes upon the Minah bird, a deadpan-looking bird who’s unusually strong and constantly frustrates Inki’s attempts to capture him. Then a lion comes on and things really go bad for Inki.

In the first half or so the animals’ reaction shots (Like the giraffe biting the spear) are little more than hollow exercises in animation. Things pick up with the Minah Bird, but it’s only when the lion shows up that this really takes off. The lion subtly makes Inki aware of his presence by hammering the ground with his paw, poking Inki with his claw, and catching him unware all over the place. Inki’s little motions to confirm the lion is by him without even looking really clinch these scenes.

Despite its problems, the Inki/lion parts make the most of the slow timing that ran through Chuck Jones’ early films.

THE GOOD EGG

Rating: 5/7

How touching. A hen finds a substitute for the egg she could not lay in the middle of a suicide attempt (!). Her baby fails to fit in with the other chicks until he saves their lives (which disturbs me a little). There are some good facial expressions for non-descript characters.

SNIFFLES AND THE BOOKWORM

Rating: ()

CURIOUS PUPPY

Rating: ()

THE MIGHTY HUNTERS

Rating: 4/7

There are WB cartoons and there are WB cartoons. 50 different scenes are dedicated to some guy sliding off a donkey, which I would ignore if I were you. Yeah, this involves the same "frustration" technique used in Goodnight Elmer and The Bird Came C.O.D., with animals and hunters fumbling around and looking each other in the face as if to wonder what just happened. It gets better at the end, though, with the tense scene of three hunters and a bear dangling off a cliff. The scenery is beautiful and the cute, beady-eyed Indians at least have some sort of effect all walking together in those different colored shorts (one of them walks in a bongo drum).

ELMER'S CANDID CAMERA

Rating: 4/7

Chuck admitted his directing in here was slow in Chuck Amuck (yet elsewhere in the book he praised Rich Hogan for the story; what a guy) as part of a sequence where he describes the evolution of Bugs Bunny. And Bugs had quite a fascinating and convoluted story behind his creation. Between Porky’s Hare Hunt and A Wild Hare, the prototype Bugs was handled by several directors, and this one’s the best of the proto-Bugs films (Although Hare-Um Scare-Um comes close).

The proto-Bugs is similar in shape to what we know and love, but he has a face like a bulldog and raisins for with glaring whiskers sticking out. And Elmer still dresses like his Egghead incarnation even though he's got the Arthur Q. Bryan voice. The scenery and characters here are scaled unusually large. Throughout most of the cartoon Elmer and Bugs take up almost the whole screen as they move around. This makes Bob McKimson’s animation especially easy to observe, but he’s not doing any of the interesting stuff he would later do for Bob Clampett. Still, it's Bob McKimson and it’s fun to watch. The most creative bit would be Elmer’s derby flailing around his head while walking, and the near-Bugs’ ssssshing Elmer, with that complex head and finger shaking.

Candid’s biggest chink is the story-structure. Between the net scene and the lake scene, the transition is very muddy and comes off as glued on. And it doesn’t feel like a Chuck Jones cartoon, more like a hybrid of early Bob Clampett and Tex Avery. There’s three or four really good gags in the cartoon – Elmer sssshing the bird (which is very Avery-esque), pre-Bugs Bunny confronting the photographer, the net scene, and the scene were Elmer jumps in the lake. In particular, the part where Elmer gets fed up with photography and destroys his equipment has a very nice cut of his face as he bellows into the screen.

SNIFFLES TAKES A TRIP

Rating: 3/7

Disney-philes should find this a classic. Me, this isn’t what I want from my animation. It just screams, “Look at me, I can make an animated film just like Disney!”. Fortunately for us, Chuck Jones shared Walt Disney’s most important trait, willingness to branch out into wild, experimental stuff and not sticking to a formula. Too many more cartoons like this and he would be stuck alongside Earl Duvall and Jack King in footnote-city.

Sniffles’ trip has beautiful outdoor scenery and good animation of Sniffles turning his head around and doing double takes. Most of the sequences follow a symmetrical formula of cuts between Sniffles looking awestruck and close-ups, each one narrower than the last, of what he’s looking at with ‘climatic’ horn blowing. Either that or looking at some scary animal up close in the eyes. In form this is an authentic Disney-imitation. In substance this has none of the characterization or plot development that would keep me watching (Not every Disney cartoon had that either, but anyone who wants to imitate that stuff has to try harder than this).

Even the end ruins a great idea, Sniffles getting scared of everything in the dark, by – natch – choreographing every scene identically to when he first got there in the daylight, evenly-timed close-ups and all. I really do like how it gets dark, and those silhouettes, especially the owl’s beady eyes, save this mediocrity from the same rating as Goodnight Elmer. Otherwise it’s my second least-favorite Chuck Jones cartoon.

TOM THUMB IN TROUBLE

Rating: 5/7

Awww...look at how Tom Thumb bathes in his dad's cupped hands and does his chores while singing a happy song. Cartoons like this warm my jaded heart. It's a shame I don't ever need to watch it, but it wouldn't kill you to watch Tom's father calling out for him and the bird crashing through the glass at least once.

THE EGG COLLECTOR

Rating: ()

GHOST WANTED

Rating: 3/7

Now how about that...Chuck invented Casper the friendly ghost. The animation for the big ghost is OK (though the best part is the little ghost changing his pjs, with the invisible hand coming out the rear) and he's voiced by Avery so that's at least a bit of fun, but the action is so slow and going from a cello droan to a horn blast doesn't make up for it. His attempts to scare the other ghost are choreographed just enough to come off without any irony or sarcasm. It's an early attempt at a spectacle with lots of flashy chase sequences but there aren't any surprises or reactions, so it comes off more like an exercise. The kiddies'll probably love it, though.

STAGE FRIGHT

Rating: ()

GOOD NIGHT ELMER

Rating: 2/7

I used to think this was the worst cartoon from the classic age of Warner Brothers, and it probably still is, but my attitude towards it has softened a little.

Actually, I didn't think it was bad the first time I watched it, and I even enjoyed watching Elmer try to get out of his clothes. Maybe this film could have been shot in live-action but at least Elmer allows for designs and expressions not available otherwise.

However, the more I watch the cartoon, the more I don't want to watch it again. Instead of gags, we get footage of the candle flaring up and Elmer attempting to snuff it out by, among other things, chopping the candle in half which only leads to two flames sprouting. Eventually the most enjoyable part comes: He goes berserk with his axe and destroys the whole bedroom. Then he lies down after trashing his bed, watches the sun rise, and begin sobbing into the camera. But by then it's too little too late.

This was supposed to be like a silent comedy where the character runs around doing ridiculous things, I guess, but Elmer doesn't run around in the least bit, and the action is boring. It's a watchable film - the events read well and the actions and reactions make sense, but there's no slapstick. It's just a very flimsy situation and a few reaction shots. The animation is only competent and doesn't add any life to the cartoon.

Ghost Wanted at least had Tex Avery's voice (not to mention a more interesting set-up) and Sniffles Takes a Trip has a pretty setting and Farm of Tomorrow had those graphic stills, but there's not a whole lot to this cartoon.

BEDTIME FOR SNIFFLES

Rating: 4/7

Waiting for Santa, Sniffles delivers one of his few cartoons I'd call entertaining. While I don't like the plot in principal there's nary a wasted scene in here and the bland, symmetrical action of Good Night Elmer is replaced with surprising twists on his attempts to stay awake, changing his facial expression before nodding off and stumbling into random acts of clumsiness while drowsy. Christmas carols are anathema to my psychological well-being and yet..."Joy to World" warms my heart more than it could in any stinking Christmas special. This seven minute cartoon delivers more holiday cheer than a shopping trip at Best Buy if you've ever had to wake up at 5:30 to go to work you will believe you are Sniffles.

ELMER'S PET RABBIT

Rating: 4/7

Second Bugs Bunny cartoon, first one by Chuck Jones. It doesn’t try to rip off A Wild Hare - That’s a plus. But Wild Hare’s visuals and silent parts said more than all of Bugs’ chattering in this one. As I ranted in some Games Ren and Stimpy review, meaningless personality influxes are not funny, so when Bugs whines about his food and eats it anyway (and still whines about it, and whines some more) it becomes obnoxious. Ditto when he urges Elmer to kick his ass and declares war.

There are moments that make me want to like it: Just imagining how fouled-up everything will get when Elmer discovers Bugs at the pet store is enough to make me laugh. Bugs’ obnoxiousness actually works when he rushes into Elmer’s home, turns on all the lights and the radio, and spontaneously forces him to dance, dragging it out long enough to amuse me when Elmer throws him out. And of course the artwork is spectacular, with these realistic strip mall and household backgrounds and Elmer looking more detailed than ever.

Besides that, this is nothing to write home about. Hardly any of the material is funny and Bugs is lacking in motivation – Elmer may be a half-wit, but he does nothing to actually provoke Bugs this entire time. Come to think of it, Chuck was way behind Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett in handling Bugs. It wouldn’t be until the early 50’s that his Bugs cartoons would become real classics (Although when they were amazing, they were amazing!).

SNIFFLES BELLS THE CAT

Rating: ()

JOE GLOW, THE FIREFLY

Rating: ()

TOY TROUBLE

Rating: ()

PORKY'S ANT

Rating: ()

PORKY'S PRIZE PONY

Rating: ()

INKI AND THE LION

Rating: ()

SNOWTIME FOR COMEDY

Rating: 4/7

These dogs can't express anything except bewilderment. It's more an animation demo than a cartoon, with the dogs going through the same disasters over and over, running into a tree, breaking a beaver's dam, sliding to get the bone, etc. The ice snapping in two under the dog's feet elicits a chuckle from me and the sight of the other one rolling into a massive snowball which crashes into a large dam is so breathtaking I have to bump up the score.

BRAVE LITTLE BAT

Rating: 4/7

Oh look, they made an animated series based on An American Tail. For a Sniffles cartoon this is tolerable. In fact, I'm somehow won over by his cutesiness in this cartoon even though it's doubled by a bat who looks and speaks just like him. The bat's cycling warble of questions and self-answers not only not gets on my nerves but is even a little funny when he does it at the most inappropriate moments.

There's also the obligatory scene where Sniffles and the bat talk about how they're in no danger while standing by the cat, albeit looking the other way. I can't believe I'm giving it such a high rating but, I think we need cutesiness like this once-in-a-while, and God knows I'd rather have it for seven minutes than 90 minutes of a Don Bluth or Steven Spielberg animated feature.

SADDLE SILLY

Rating: 5/7

A mainstay of the old west, the pony express, is romanticized (*snicker*) with a hardworking, yet dopey mail carrier who talks in that deadpan pilot-to-pilot voice over a radio on his horse and gets some very good advice about his hat. The horses gallop at different angles and close-ups and in a complex scene one horse passes the deliverer to another. Towards the end he has to face a Moe Hikan who bounces daintily on the rear of his white fat horse while the rider uses his as a shield, not without protest from the horse.

Tex Avery's influence on Chuck Jones comes through in the form of impossible gags like the rider mime-riding his horse over a chasm, the audience-teasing screen text, and the ink-suction on the feather quilt as well as the use of a running gag involving a hitchhiker that doesn't culminate until the very end.

PORKY'S MIDNIGHT MATINEE

Rating: ()

THE BIRD CAME C.O.D.

Rating: 4/7

The spiritual brother of Goodnight Elmer, this one is better due to Conrad's hippity-hoppity leg animation and some of his grimacing faces, plus the scene where he crashes through every instrument in the pit. Otherwise we are subjected to a plant clinging to the doorway by the leaves and bouncing him back into the truck and a bunch of birds going back and forth to bop him the face. At least Chuck got out of making his characters constantly fail to perform the simplest action, but you have to wonder why he thought it was a good idea in the first place. :P

CONRAD THE SAILOR

Rating: 5/7

A few running gags mark this chase cartoon. Daffy's obnoxiousness turns me off a bit, since he does it unprovoked, and actually goes out of his way to provoke Conrad over and over. But...it is fun to watch how Conrad reacts! Daffy often comes right in his face, harassing him by messing up his work and calling him names and then hiding in a really obvious spot while Conrad makes an arse of himself.

Conrad himself has a few nice animations like his skippy hop and the blurs while lunging at Daffy, and his haplessness is off-set by his ability to somehow show up wherever Daffy runs (it's pretty funny when his arm crawls out of the lifeboat). He's voiced by Pinto Colvin of Goofy Fame and is a lot more fun than in The Bird Came C.O.D..

A good running gag is the eyeless, apathetic looking admiral who randomly walks through the screen, elicting a salute from Conrad...then Daffy...then something else...

PORKY'S CAFE

Rating: ()

DOG TIRED

Rating: 4/7

Two dogs spend the day at the zoo. This gets an extra point for the rush when the dog runs up the hippo's back, the recurring hyena laugh, a change in the orchestration, and the rendering of the lion with a close-up of his growling. Otherwise the dogs run through the same backgrounds with the same scenes repeating each other over and over...How many times did they knock down that pelican? 28?

THE DRAFT HORSE

Rating: 5/7

This further establishes Chuck's identity, where he spends enough time on one great idea, the horse simulating a battle by imitating machine gun fire and airplanes diving with his legs, to make it the centerpiece of the cartoon, revolving the best gags like the major's heartfelt reaction around it. It's one of the earliest instances of his "sincere-silly" acting (culminating in the elephant from Rabbit Fire).

It also shows that Chuck was figuring out how to do visual spectacles - the horse plowing through fields, houses, automobiles, bridges, and the camera pausing to show what destruction and alterations he committed is a good build-up to the next shot of speedy animation.

The phoney battle sequence isn't as good but his delicacy in stepping over every mine is another visual highlight.

HOLD THE LION, PLEASE!

Rating: 5/7

Aah...everything good and bad about early Chuck Jones is in here: The lush, pastel scenery, the large, expressive characters, the lumpy look and the acceptable-but-not-too-interesting animation plus incredibly slow timing and some uplifting spots amid general boredom.

It's nice to have around if only for the variety of hues coloring the jungle (frozen blue, anyone?), the characters' circular proportions, and the scenes of animals making fun of the lion, including a sarcastic cowering in fear, which unfortunately is over too soon.

The main action with Bugs gets a few chuckles out of me - The wabbit choo-chooing by with a cigar for a smokestack, tricking the lion into believing he is stuck behind a doorway and his panic-stricken frenzy. But these are few and far between. It's mostly dedicated to chase scenes that look interesting but don't lead to anything except more confrontations. Oh well, at least we have the backgrounds.

THE SQUAWKIN' HAWK

Rating: 5/7

So who else was surprised to learn that Henry Hawk was not created by Robert McKimson? If you're patient this is an engaging cartoon if not LOL-funny or particularly rewarding. The worm's straddling between hopeful and anxious works with the mother and son chicken hawks arguing off-frame as he moves back and forth on a giant spoon, which he shakes with as the mom recoils in fury.

Junior stalking through the farm, jumping off his home branch, and chasing a weathervane shadow is more entertaining than it should be due to that determined look on his face, his high-legged walk cycle and that lonely flute. It's tense when he feels his way around a fluffy chicken, whose reaction upon discovering him is a release of panicky motion and the most enticing moment.

A few more funny gags come in the form of the chicken's rooster husband who sounds like an self-unaware geek with a slight upward pause in his speech pattern: His reactions to Henry's attempts to pick a fight, his botching an escape through a jug that Henry pulls off, and his falling back down after getting up again when his wife hits him.

Some of the camera angles are menacing, including the intro shot to Henry's house and his mother glaring at him from the barn window.

FOX POP

Rating: 5/7

Why would a fox run out with someone's radio and smash it? This set-up leads to a flashback showing his naivette (you might even say stupidity) in thinking he could be wrapped around a beautiful woman's neck by selling himself to the fur industry. He gets himself caught on purpose and the reaction of his cellmate when he refuses to escape is so funny, as are the dogs who track him down.