User Reviews

"Daffy Duck Hunt" takes first place on my list of all-time favorite Looney Tunes, with "Napoleon Bunny-Part" (Bugs Bunny) and "Guided Muscle" (The Road Runner) tied for second place and "Bewitched Bunny" (Bugs Bunny and Witch Hazel) getting third.

But what especially makes me crack up about this short is that in the spring of 1973, when I was living in Lansing, Michigan, and was then 11, a station in Grand Rapids ran the Looney Tunes every weekday at 4:00 P.M. Opposite the Looney Tunes on a Lansing station was a locally-produced puppet show which my younger sister loved but I despised; they kept doing frequent Alvin and the Chipmunks takeoffs, which drove me crazy! (Anybody from Lansing, Michigan reading this who was a kid back then will know what I'm talking about, but everybody else can deduce the puppet show's title by reading between the lines: its lead character was named Aloysius E. Khatt.)

One day, I raced my sister home from school so I could get to the TV before she could (you have to remember that in 1973 - at least, not for the next seven years - there weren't any such things as VCRs); when I beat her home, my sister left the house in frustration. Shortly after she left, "Daffy Duck Hunt" came on, and remembering the part where Daffy banged on the washtub to needle the dog and wake up Porky, I took a pot lid and wooden spoon from our kitchen and "clanged" along in unison with Daffy beating the tub (it sounded like a firehouse alarm!).

About fifteen minutes later, my sister came back in the house and inquired, "The neighbors want to know what all that noise was in here!" Needless to say, I blushed then, but every time I see "Daffy Duck Hunt" again now I can't help but crack up when I think of this childhood incident! (I also know the entire script of this short by heart to this day.)

Also, every time I hear "Jingle Bells" now - and want to sing along with it - I have this strange compulsion to shout "APRIL?!" before singing the last line (thanks, Robert McKimson and Warren Foster - may you both rest in peace)!

All told, "Daffy Duck Hunt" certainly was worthy of a "Blue Ribbon" shown in the opening titles - too bad it didn't win an Oscar as well. Still, this short is a winner in my book!

. . . as they did chicken. Then, as Today, ducks roamed U.S. skies free as birds, just there waiting to be taken by any True Blue American Parent with a musket. Chickens, on the other hand, were relatively rare, and a commodity to be bought and paid for with cold, hard cash, to boot. Male chickens (that is, roosters) served as the family alarm clocks in Pre-Cell Phone Days. Females, or hens, were needed for their eggs. Therefore, regardless of their sex, the Chickens of Yesteryear were too precious to be eaten until they expired from Natural Causes. Ducks, on the other hand, were six for a nickel, as hunters with good aim retrieved and reused most of their shot. Then, in the 1940s, the idea for an American Domestic Chicken Industry was hatched, and these chicken schemers commissioned Warner Bros. to produce animated shorts such as DAFFY DUCK HUNT to portray free fowl as aggravating and inedible. Foghorn Leghorn, on the other hand, was carefully crafted to make U.S. kids crave drumsticks, while the Tweety Bird cartoons were deviously designed to drum up a market for mashed-together chicken by-products, fiendishly renamed McNuggets. It took a decade or two to lay this subliminal cartoon groundwork, but now Domestic Chicken is one of America's top Success Stories.

"Daffy Duck Hunt" (really generic title) is another Warner Bros cartoon that has the legendary McKimson, Foster and Blanc work on it and it runs for slightly over 7 minutes liked they usually do. This one's from 1949 and it means it will have its 70th anniversary next year already. Of course it is despite the age a color and sound cartoon. Interestingly enough, this one has Daffy play the character that gets away with it all, usually Bugs' spot and the mostly competent barnyard dog has not much too laugh in here as he gets tricked again and again by the feisty dog. Maybe Foghorn Leghorn should ask Daffy for a lesson in how to deal with the doggy. Anyway, the third on board here is Porky, but his days of being a lead character were long over by the end og the first half of the 20th century, so he is basically just a victim of circumstance that suffers from Daffy's shenanigans thinking the dog did it all. That's all there is to it basically. Not one of WB's best, not even close, not even from its particular year. I guess they realized this was not the right role for Daffy and they gave him roles afterward again more frequently that resembled the dog character in here where he is the one getting fooled. All in all, I give this cartoon a thumbs-up. Not everyone can be a winner. Also finally still an interesting note of what I had to think of when seeing Daffy. He is probably so black that people would not even come close to comparing him to Donald. Oh well, I am more of a Disney guy, so my bias may have to do with my rating here. That's all folks.

Directed by Bob McKimson, "Daffy Duck Hunt" is a wild and wacky Daffy Duck/Porky Pig cartoon. As with some other Warner Bros. cartoons, Porky is cast as a hunter in this film, but perhaps he should have chosen a target other than the silly, crazy, mischievous Daffy.

Highlights: As Porky and his dog hunt for Daffy, Daffy sings and dances a cancan while wearing a Parisian skirt; he then flashes his derrière, which contains a bull's-eye mark. Daffy emerges from Porky's deep-freeze unit dressed up in a Santa outfit, and he leads Porky & the dog in singing "Jingle Bells"; Porky's stuttering, and his discovery that the current month is April, make the song a lot funnier. The dog's good and evil consciences appear, as an angel and devil, of course; the angel wins against the devil but in a very non-angelic manner.

Daffy is quite uncontainable in "Daffy Duck Hunt," willing to do or say almost anything for a laugh. I do find it surprising that Porky is very physically abusive to his dog, repeatedly punishing him for Daffy's loud racket.