My review was written in September 1988 after a Chelsea screening in Manhattan.
The fifth of WB's animated compilation films to be released this decade, "Daffy Duck's Quackbusters" is an entertaining effort. Effect wears thin on the big screen but pic will make noise in ancillary markets.
Overall concept and new footage directed by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon has Daffy Duck inheriting a fortune from J. P. Cubish, but is haunted by the skinflint's ghost. Our hero forms an exorcising company, Ghosts 'R' Us, hiring pals Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny as assistants, and within this framework eleven WB cartoons dealing vaguely with the supernatural are packaged.
Most of the shorts were directed by Chuck Jones, with his trademark chases and falls on view, with Sylvester and Tweety Pie also featured. Transitions to new footage are okay, although the stalwart Mel Blanc's voice changes slightly for Porky Pig and Daffy, and the color varies detectably.
Ford and Lennon's structuring of the material works except for several "commercial breaks" of Daffy hawking his wares on tv which accentuate the episodic format.
Besides the classic cartoons, including Chuck Jones' "The Abominable Snow Rabbit" (with his monster parodying Lenny in "Of Mice and Men") plus Friz Freleng's "Hyde and Go Tweet" (fiff on "Dr. Jekyll") and Robert McKimson's "Prize Pest", film is highlighted by inclusion of Ford and Lennon's 1987 "The Duxorcist", a funny and hip parody in which Mel Blanc is well supported by B. J. Ward in the vocal department.
Feature's prolog consists of stand-alone new short "The Night of the Living Duck" (in which Mel Torme provides Daffy with a nightclub singing voice), also directed by Ford and Lennon.
The fifth of WB's animated compilation films to be released this decade, "Daffy Duck's Quackbusters" is an entertaining effort. Effect wears thin on the big screen but pic will make noise in ancillary markets.
Overall concept and new footage directed by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon has Daffy Duck inheriting a fortune from J. P. Cubish, but is haunted by the skinflint's ghost. Our hero forms an exorcising company, Ghosts 'R' Us, hiring pals Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny as assistants, and within this framework eleven WB cartoons dealing vaguely with the supernatural are packaged.
Most of the shorts were directed by Chuck Jones, with his trademark chases and falls on view, with Sylvester and Tweety Pie also featured. Transitions to new footage are okay, although the stalwart Mel Blanc's voice changes slightly for Porky Pig and Daffy, and the color varies detectably.
Ford and Lennon's structuring of the material works except for several "commercial breaks" of Daffy hawking his wares on tv which accentuate the episodic format.
Besides the classic cartoons, including Chuck Jones' "The Abominable Snow Rabbit" (with his monster parodying Lenny in "Of Mice and Men") plus Friz Freleng's "Hyde and Go Tweet" (fiff on "Dr. Jekyll") and Robert McKimson's "Prize Pest", film is highlighted by inclusion of Ford and Lennon's 1987 "The Duxorcist", a funny and hip parody in which Mel Blanc is well supported by B. J. Ward in the vocal department.
Feature's prolog consists of stand-alone new short "The Night of the Living Duck" (in which Mel Torme provides Daffy with a nightclub singing voice), also directed by Ford and Lennon.