Looney Tunes Golden Collection - Volume 1

Edition details

Personal

Notes

The four discs' music-only shorts are not so much music only as they are sans dialog. Sound effects are intact, but the brilliant orchestral work shines through in: Rabbit Seasoning, What's Up Doc?, Rabbit's Kin, Duck Amuck, Drip-Along Daffy, The Scarlet Pumpernickle, Rabbit Fire, Baton Bunny, Feed The Kitty, Putty Tat Twouble, Broken Leghorn and Speedy Gonzales.

Disc one's short featurettes are found in Behind The Tunes, a choice of three: Bugs - A Rabbit for All Seasons (5:40); Short Fuse Shootout - The Small Tale of Yosemite Sam (3:04); and, Forever Befuddled (3:27). A more substantial documentary on this disc is The Boys From Termite Terrace Part 1 (28:54), produced in 1975 for the Camera Three series. Bugs Bunny At The Movies demonstrates an early integration of animated characters with live action film. Bugs excerpts appear here as 1948's Two Guys From Texas (3:34) and 1949's My Dream is Yours (4:52).

The Bugs Bunny Show offers two examples of Looney Tunes' transition to television. A Star Is Bored Bridging Sequences (5:50) shows us some of the few surviving elements made specifically to link the various shorts on the show. And in The Astro Nuts Audio Recording Session (4:10), we hear Mel Blanc recording lines for a few characters. Blooper Bunny: Bugs Bunny's 51-1/2 Anniversary (8:26) is a clever behind the scenes mockumentary about a celebration of the perennial bunny's anniversary. It may be heard with and without a Greg Ford commentary. The Trailer Gallery has two choices: Bugs Bunny's Cartoon Festival (1:22); and Bugs Bunny's Cartoon Jamboree (1:23). The last supplement on this disc is the Stills Gallery, a collection of dozens of drawings, including backgrounds and characters.

Disc two is organized in a similar way. Behind The Tunes offers Hard Luck Duck (3:42), Porky Pig Roast - A Tribute to the World's Most Famous Ham (3:44), and Animal Quackers (4:18). The continuation of disc one's excellent and substantial documentary is here, The Boys From Termite Terrace Part 2 (27:59). The extras on this disc conclude with more pictures and drawings in another Stills Gallery.

Disc three continues the set's consistent look and feel with Behind The Tunes, a choice of three short featurettes: Too Fast Too Furry-ous (5:02); Blanc Expressions (4:25); and, Merrie Melodies - Carl Stalling and Cartoon Misic (4:22 - by the way, Music is indeed spelled "Misic" on the menu screen; if it's a pun, I don't get it). Toonheads - The Lost Cartoons (45:37) was produced for The Cartoon Network in 2000. Here you'll find many examples of unusual Warner animation including television commercials and special shorts produced for the government during World War II, like 1943's Private SNAFU short called Spies. From The Vaults offers Hair-Raising Hare Scheme-Matics (7:48) and The Hypo-Chondri-Cat Scheme-Matics (7:40). These are nice studies in how cartoons are scripted with drawings; preliminary sketches are shown sequentially to create the structure from which final animation would be produced. And once again, this disc's extras are completed with a Stills Gallery.

On disc four, once again the short featurettes may be found in Behind The Tunes: Needy For Speedy (3:12); Putty Problems and Canary Rows (5:37); and, Southern Pride Chicken (3:03). Irreverent Imagination: The Golden Age Of Looney Tunes (50:41) is another very substantial and outstanding documentary. It's here that Stan Freberg describes the history of animation and Warner Animation in particular. From the Vaults takes us back to the earliest days of Warner Animation with Bosko, The Talk-Ink Kid (4:44) and Virgil Ross Pencil Tests (1:11). And finally, the disc ends the set's remarkable collection of supplements with yet another Stills Gallery. Whew... I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted.