Warner Bros. Cartoons
A journey through home video releases of Warner Bros. Cartoons.
I have a number of early memories watching Looney Tunes cartoons:
- We used to have a public domain VHS with three cartoons on it. One was The Wabbit Who Came to Supper. The other two turned out to be colourised versions of Ali Baba Bound and Who’s Who in the Zoo.
- In the late 90s an episode of Stay Tooned aired on a weekend morning. It was specifically about wartime cartoons.
- Watching a bank of Roadrunner cartoons on ITV.
- Having played Sheep, Dog, ‘n’ Wolf on the PS1 I tracked down poor quality copies of the seven Ralph Wolf cartoons.
In January 2012 I came across the Looney Tunes Golden Collection box set, for the princely sum of £26 (I believe my exact thought was “I’d be stupid not to do this”). The cartoons worked out at about £0.07 each. As I worked through it, I wrote a series of short reviews.
The reviews are posted below, more or less as written. Comments are mostly contemporary.
In the beginning, progress was good. I discovered early on that the cartoons were a good way to pass the time on train journeys.
| Date of Review | Location | Copyright Year | Title | Review Text | Rating | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 1 | 1945 | Baseball Bugs | In which Bugs Bunny single-handedly defeats a baseball team, the Gorillas. Some good visual gags, and an early version of Bugs switching a conversation. |
★★★★ | |
| 25/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 2 | 1951 | Rabbit Seasoning | An old favourite. The deadpan delivery near the start is excellent. Daffy Duck brings it on himself. |
★★★★★ | |
| 27/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 3 | 1948 | Long-Haired Hare | In which Bugs Bunny wages war on an opera singer, culminating in the destruction of the opera house. |
★★★ | |
| 28/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 4 | 1948 | High Diving Hare | In which Bugs manages to make Yosemite Sam fall off a diving board innumerable times. Brilliant. |
★★★★★ | On the commentary Friz Freleng describes this cartoon as a dangerous picture to makebecause it's the same joke over and over again. First cartoon I watched on a train journey. |
| 28/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 5 | 1948 | Bully for Bugs | In which Bugs becomes a bullfighter. The score is excellent, as is the final over the top gag. |
★★★★ | |
| 29/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 6 | 1949 | What's Up Doc | In which Bugs has a showbiz career in a Vaudeville act with Elmer Fudd. Contains some caricatures which I am far too young to understand, but some of the jokes still work. |
★★★ | Al Jolson, Jack Benny and Bing Crosby are some of the caricatures. |
| 29/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 7 | 1951 | Rabbit's Kin | In which Bugs saves a small rabbit from an impressively stupid Puma. At one point he has the Puma hitting himself on the head with a mallet. |
★★★ | |
| 29/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 8 | 1950 | Water, Water Every Hare | In which Bugs must escape from the castle of an evil scientist (Boo). Features an appearance by Gossamer, but is mostly plot driven. |
★★★ | |
| 29/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 9 | 1948 | Big House Bunny | In which Bugs ends up in a prison with Yosemite Sam. Features an ‘Ajax Escape Kit’, but the significance of the name isn’t clear. |
★★★ | I will have bumped on AJAX because it became a programming term (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML – though ironically it ended up being mostly used with JSON). |
| 29/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 10 | 1950 | Big Top Bunny | In which Bugs must outwit a Russian bear in a circus act. The bear brings it on himself. |
★★★★ | |
| 30/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 11 | 1948 | Big Top Bunny | In which Bugs must play golf with an angry Scotsman. Possibly very different to an American. |
★★★★ | |
| 30/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 12 | 1941 | Wabbit Trouble | In which an older (or should that be younger) Bugs torments the fat Elmer Fudd on his camping trip. Some unusual background design and an excellent sequence set to the William Tell Overture. |
Seems to have been unrated, for some reason. | |
| 31/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 13 | 1948 | Ballot Box Bunny | In which Bugs must prevent Sam from winning an election, which he does with a large quantity of TNT. |
★★★★ | |
| 31/01/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon 14 | 1949 | The Rabbit of Seville | Brilliant. The Overture of The Barber of Seville, in cartoon form. The timing and the soundtrack are excellent. |
★★★★★ | |
| 02/02/2012 | Golden Collection Volume 1, Disc 1, Cartoon Bonus 1 | 1991 | Blooper Bunny | A gag reel featuring “outtakes”. Made after the death of Mel Blanc so the voices are a little off. Some inside jokes are amusing. |
★★★ |