Looney Tunes - Golden Collection Volume 6Fifteen cartoons dating from World War II give Volume 6 of
the Looney Tunes Golden Collection more focus than previous sets. Many of
the 1940's cartoons remain very funny. Bugs Bunny dresses up as Brunnhilda and rides in to
the strains of "Tannhauser" in "Herr Meets Hare" (1945), a gag Chuck Jones re-used to greater effect in "What's Opera, Doc" a dozen years later. In "Russian Rhapsody" (1940) some of
the gremlins who sabotage Hitler's bomber are cari
catures of
the Warner Bros. artists. Chuck Jones appears as a chunky, pinkish-tan homunculus swinging a mallet; Friz Freleng is a little green man with a saw-like nose. Younger viewers may find
the references to wartime shortages puzzling--or fail to recognize
the cari
catures of Hermann Goering, Hideki Tojo and Joseph Stalin. Some of
the o
ther cartoons can still bring down
the house, including "Satan's Waitin'" (1954), in which Sylvester manages to lose all nine of his lives in pursuit of Tweety, and "Bear Feat" (1949), ano
ther exercise in futility for Jones' Three Bears.
The early musicals featuring Bosko, Foxy (or Freddy Fox) and Buddy have not aged well. Created by Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising,
these characters were modeled on
Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse, but lack charm and personality. Some more recent films reveal how social attitudes have changed. "Wild Wife," a spoof of a suburban housewife's tribulations, may have seemed hilarious in 1954; today, it's just a laundry list of sexist gags. Like
the previous installments, Volume 6 comes loaded with extras.
The rarest are five shorts Friz Freleng directed at MGM in 1938. Producer Fred Quimby lured Freleng away from Warner Bros.--only to insist he adapt
the comic strip "
The Captain and
the Kids," Rudolph Dirks' version of "
The Katzenjammer Kids." Freleng correctly predicted
the films would flop as
the characters were "
the meanest little bastards in
the world," and soon returned to Warners.