This year, because I've been really good, Santa will be bringing me the second Looney Tunes Golden Collection. I'm looking forward to that gift as much as I am to just about any other, including my copy of Max Allan Collins' Men's Adventure Magazines. Which is saying a lot.
Probably everybody has a favorite Warner Brothers cartoon, and there are so many good ones that it's hard to choose just one. So I won't even try. But I will mention one that impressed me a lot when I was a kid. I saw it only once and never got another look at it until I got the first Golden Collection last year. Since I watched WB cartoons on TV for hundreds hours with my kids when they were young, I don't know how I missed this one, but it was great to see it again at last.
It's called "Scaredy Cat," and it stars Porky and Sylvester, who go to an old deserted mansion on a dark and stormy night. Practically the first thing that Sylvester sees is a bunch of mice taking a cat to be excuted, while as what I thought of as a kid as "the Death March" is played in the background. For whatever reason, this struck me as the creepiest scene in any cartoon I'd ever seen. I was happy to discover that I found it just as creepy after all these years. I've watched "Scaredy Cat" a couple of times just to see that scene. The whole thing seems to have a little bit darker tone than most cartoons, in spite of the overly cheerful ending. Maybe that's one reason why I liked it so much.
And of course another reason is that I can't resist the old-deserted-mansion-on-a-dark-and stormy-night bit. Give me Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and I'm a happy guy. Hey, I'll even watch Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorillia. Judy often says, "It takes so little to make you happy." How true.
1 comment:
The Warner Brothers cartoons were always my favorites. I was a faithful watcher of The Bugs Bunny Show when I was a teenager. Back then my favorite character was Foghorn Leghorn. His antics made me laugh, I say, laugh so hard my sides would ache. The older cartoons were great, too, but harder to come across.
What's so neat about the whole WBs cartoon factory, if what I've read is true, is that virtually no one in management knew they were there and they operated without interference from the suits.
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