Christmas fog horn leg horn12/30/2023 ![]() More television specials followed ( Daffy Duck’s Thanks-for-Giving Special (1980), Daffy Duck’s Easter Special (1980), Bugs Bunny’s Bustin’ Out All Over (1981) et al) and the theatrical shorts were revived in 1987 with The Duxorcist (Daffy Duck was certainly making up for his absence here). ![]() And all the energy and brio that we remember the original shorts for is conspicuous by its absence.Īnd yet the characters endured. The violence is toned down, the jokes cornier and the characters less charismatic than before. It lacks the inspired anarchic humour of the classics (an injection of Daffy Duck’s patent brand of insanity would have helped no end) and with its over-familiar and exaggerated sound effects, it feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon than anything that the inmates of Termite Terrace – the animator’s name for the team and the building they worked from – would have come up with. The animation is cruder than before and the gags more strained. But they were never really off our screens and even in their often edited forms, the shorts were a lot funnier than the disappointing material offered here. Had the characters been off our screens for some time, one might just forgive Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales‘ many shortcomings and hope that it would introduce a new generation of young viewers to the classic characters. There’s a cameo from Speedy Gonzales, Taz gets angry a lot and the ever-cool Bugs outsmarts him at every turn – and that’s pretty much your lot. Again, it’s all very generic and predictable, the same old thing dressed up in Yuletide trappings. tries to catch Road Runner and is either outsmarted by the high speed bird or badly let down by some ill-advised Acme purchases.įreleng returns for the last story, Fright Before Christmas in which the Tasmanian Devil, disguised as Santa Claus, renews his ongoing beef with Bugs Bunny who is trying to get young Clyde off to sleep on Christmas Eve. All the surprises they had had been sprung decades earlier and here we just get the same old routine trotted out yet again – Wile E. The characters’ original creator Chuck Jones was at the helm for this one and while there are a few decent gags here and there, the appeal of these two had worn thin a very long time ago. Coyote’s eternal pursuit of the Road Runner continues in the second segment which has barely anything to do with Christmas at all. ![]() There are no ghosts, just Bugs playing gags on Scrooge and the whole thing is over in the blink of an eye. Sam plays Scrooge, Porky is Bob Cratchit, Bugs is Fred and Friz Freleng is Tiny Tim in the briefest and most incomplete adaptation of the much-filmed novel to date. It’ all a far cry from the classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts with the comic timing seeming awkward and “off” most of the time.Īfter a handful of the the characters – Bugs, of course, Pepe le Pew, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd (sadly there’s no room for Daffy Duck for some reason and Pepe, Foghorn and Elmer all only appear in these musical interludes) – gather for a rendition of the almost inevitable Deck the Halls (honestly, you can’t escape it in American film and television during the Christmas season) we’re straight into the first story, a severely truncated retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol directed by Warner Bros. A decade later, they were given a new lease of life when CBS commissioned a one-off special, Bugs Bunny’s Looney Christmas Tales, made up of three short stales, Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol, Freeze Frame and Fright Before Christmas. There hadn’t been a new theatrical short since 1969 and the release of Robert McKimson’s Injun Trouble featuring the almost forgotten character Cool Cat. The Looney Tunes characters were a constant presence on television around the world in the 1970s, often in bowdlerised versions that edited out some of the more outmoded attitudes and behaviours of the cartoon superstars. ![]()
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