Duck Amuck. The Scarlet Pumpernickel. What's Opera, Doc? One Froggy Evening.
If you don't recognize these titles, then that's Reason 1 to check out Warner Home Video's Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One on Blu-Ray. Featuring 3 discs of 50 of the greatest cartoons the Termite Terrace gang ever created, this is a collection no film lover should be without.
Warner Home Video's Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One Blu-Ray
From 1930 to 1969, a gang of insane animators and artists cranked out some of the most bizarre and inventive cartoon shorts ever committed to celluloid. Featuring characters like Bugs Bunny, Marvin the Martian, Daffy Duck and Foghorn Leghorn, people like directors Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Robert McKimson, voice actor Mel Blanc and musical director Carl Stallings mixed high art, low art and sheer lunacy into some of the most memorable shorts ever created - who doesn't automatically hear "Kill da wabbit" over Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries after seeing What's Opera, Doc?
The first disc is a "greatest hits" package: the aforementioned titles, plus other classics like Rabbit Hood (featuring a perfect Errol Flynn cameo), Pepé le Pew's greatest hour in the Oscar-winning For Scent-imental Reasons, and Baby Bottleneck where Daffy and Porky Pig are in charge of the Animal Kingdom's baby delivery service (future Peanuts animator Bill Meléndez worked on this short).
And then there's Duck Amuck. Called the second greatest animated short film ever made (behind What's Opera, Doc?), it's nearly 7 minutes of surreal lunacy as Daffy Duck battles an unknown animator who seems intent on reducing Daffy to incoherent rage. It cheerfully violates every film convention while showing Daffy in ever more ludicrous and bizarre situations. Pure genius.
Disc 2 honours the lesser heroes of the Looney Tunes canon, such as Marvin the Martian, adorable kitten Marc Anthony, Witch Hazel, boy dreamer Ralph Phillips and the Tasmanian Devil. Also, you get 6 classic "one shot" cartoons such as the classic One Froggy Evening where a singing and dancing frog has a strange problem with stage fright.
Finally, Disc 3 details the history of celebrated animation director Chuck Jones with several documentaries plus a selection of his other cartoon shorts: 7 shorts produced for the US government, plus his Oscar-winning The Dot and the Line: a Romance in Lower Mathematics, a pencil test for How the Grinch Stole Christmas plus the Oscar-winning anti-war cartoon The Door.
But wait: there's more . . .
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One Blu-Ray Extras
Many of the more historically significant cartoons in this collection come with audio commentaries, music-only tracks and making-of featurettes or retrospectives. There are also histories of various Looney Tunes characters, Chuck Jones' animation secrets and a retrospective on the "one shot" cartoons.
In addition, you get 9 cartoons from outside Looney Tunes' golden age, such as From Hare to Eternity (Jones' tribute to Friz Freleng) and Duck Dodgers and the Return of the 24 1/2th Century. Finally, you get an enclosed 52-page booklet with rare pics and liner notes from animation historian Jerry Beck.
Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One Blu-Ray a Must For Film Fans
Classic cartoons plus a wealth of background information and documentaries? Where do I sign up? Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Volume One Blu-Ray gets a 5/5.
Dominic von Riedemann - Dominic is the Animated Film Feature Writer, and winner of 11 Suite 101 Editors' Choice Awards.
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