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By
WAYNE KLEIN
Warner did a great job of
strip-mining their own collection of classic
cartoons over the years. The original classics
were repackaged ad nauseum to an unsuspecting
public. In many cases, some of these were edited
into feature film formats or edited for
television. The result was a travesty to say the
least.
With the advent of DVD and the success of Disney
releases, Warner has finally done justice to many
of the greatest Looney Tunes produced during their
golden period. While light on Bob Clampett
(Clampett is represented by a couple of classic
shorts) and Avery, "The Golden Collection" has
most of the cream of the crop well represented.
Although I have to question the way these shorts
are grouped, there's no doubt that "Duck Dodgers,"
"Rabbit Seasoning," "Long-Haired Hare," "Rabbit of
Seville," "Duck Amuck," "Drip-Along Daffy," "The
Scarlet Pumpernickel," "Rabbit Fire," "Deduce You
Say," "Scaredy Cat," "Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid,"
and many of the other shorts here deserve to be
included. What's surprising is that there are only
14 shorts on each disc (they could easily have
been stretched to 20).
The extras are certainly entertaining and
interesting. For example, there's a discussion of
Clampett's lasting contribution to the Looney
Tunes -- but one of his best cartoons, "Porky in
Wackyland," is nowhere to be found on this
collection. While it isn't from the same timeframe
as many of these shorts (then again neither is
Boid), it certainly deserved inclusion. It's one
of the most surreal, bizarre and funny cartoons
ever developed.
Avery's importance to the development of the
various characters isn't overlooked either but,
again, some of his best Warner shorts (and,
admittedly, he wasn't at the studio as long as the
other directors) are also sadly missing.
Personally, I would have organized this based on
chronology instead of characters. That's a minor
quibble at best though. There is also a commentary
by historian Michael Barrier, along with audio
clips of Jones and others commenting on their
classics. And the inclusion of the outtakes short
as an extra is truly inspired and a lot of fun.
The DVD format is pretty unforgiving and some of
these classics demonstrate a large amount of
analog flaws. The two where this is most
noticeable are classic Jones shorts: "Scaredy Cat"
looks awful at times. There's noticeable dust and
other blemishes that are a bit distracting. As to
whether these might have been fixable digitally,
well, perhaps. Still others like "Duck Amuck" look
marvelous (although every short here suffers from
some analog blemish -- it's the nature of the age
of the originals and the condition of the prints
used). While laserdiscs weren't quite as high-end
as DVD in terms of the resolution, some of these
classic shorts actually looked better in that
format.
There is still much missing from this classic
collection but what's here is undeniably great.
There is still a mother lode of other great shorts
and hopefully those will be included on the next
collection. This is a great start from Warner. |
