It’s not hard to see why the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Six may appear lackluster, but that’s only in comparison to how many masterpieces the previous volumes have. We all saw that this was coming after nearly 300 Warner cartoons being released: a collection with a near even hit-miss ratio. But even so, this set is another example of why these shorts were the greatest things ever animated.
It’s all about the acting, something all of the Warner directors knew how to do. The first disc, a grab-bag of the studio’s most popular characters, showcases some of the studio’s finest moments. Friz Freleng’s Hare Trigger is a masterpiece that’s still waiting to be rediscovered. Fewer scenes in cartoon history are better acted and timed than Virgil Ross’ handling of Yosemite Sam drawing a gun, who sincerely wants Bugs’ approval. There isn’t a single similar moment in the character’s history like the battle on top of the train where Bugs is truly at odds with a match. I agree with Freleng’s own assessment of it: the first Sam picture was the best. Freleng’s other short on the disc, Satan’s 
Waitin’, is a truly terrifying film. Hanna-Barbera’s similar and earlier short, Heavenly Puss, doesn’t connect me with the doomed Tom nearly as much as Freleng and Warren Foster do here with Sylvester. Ross shows again his niche for acting (as does, of course, Mel Blanc) of Sylvester’s arrival in Hell and the stammering of, “Th-th-th-Thylvesthter!”
Bob McKimson never truly failed as a director (at least not until the mid-1950s), he just wasn’t as talented as the others. Considering that his co-workers and predecessors pretty much consisted of 
the five greatest animation directors in film history, and even his worst cartoons are still somewhere in the top 1% of every cartoon ever made, he didn’t do too bad. Crowing Pains (seen here with its original credits for the first time in over sixty years) may be his best cartoon, containing what he excelled at in top form: over-the-top brutal slapstick, which the Foghorn Leghorn series did best out of all the Warner series. (The series did grow tiresome as the series progressed, as evidenced in Raw! Raw! Rooster!, which is saved by an energetic performance by Daws Butler as Foggy’s college ‘pal’ Rhode Island Red).
Two other early McKimson gems (well, really one-and-three-quarters) are featured, Birth of a Notion, featuring Daffy and a terrific Peter Lorre caricature, and the Goofy Gophers’ A Ham in a Role (a cartoon written for Art Davis’ unit, but laid out by McKimson and animated by his), which still retrospectively remains a nice subtle shot at the UPA elitism (that was only in its earliest stages at the time).
Chuck Jones’ My Favorite Duck and To Duck or Not to Duck come from that eventful animation year, 1942, where the guy actually became the ‘good’ Chuck Jones, with more exaggerated animation, sharper cutting and timing, and actual humor. Just about all of the other Jones selections here show the unit at its best and funniest. It’s hard for me to choose between Bear Feat, Jumpin’ Jupiter, Dog Gone South, or Often an Orphan as a favorite here, as all four are excellent cartoons.The frame to the left from the third short may be the funniest drawing in the history of ever: a facial expression that no real person could make, but still completely convincing and human, one of Jones’ trademarks. (My Little Duckaroo is fairly terrible though, and clearly comes off as the product of talented people who knew they were going to be laid off any day now and not caring.) A minor gripe would be that no sterling examples of handling the major characters by Tashlin, Clampett, or Avery were included.
The second disc, features propaganda films of all kind. The best comes first, with Friz Freleng’s hilarious Herr Meets Hare and Daffy the Commando and Bob Clampett’s masterpiece Russian Rhapsody, which may be the only time Lou Lilly’s sadistic writing ever worked at the studio (because who really cares if Adolf Hitler gets crushed by an airplane, right?). We are treated to the first full-blown restoration of a 1931 cartoon on the set, Bosko the Doughboy, one of the better Bosko cartoons filled with some rather disturbingly hilarious sight gags. (Though for a more interesting example of the same sort of thing, the highlighting of animal soldier corpses, see Otto Messmer’s earlier and superior Felix Turns the Tide.)
Fifth Column Mouse (Freleng) and The Draft Horse (Jones) are strict propaganda, but are at least beautifully animated with some real characterization. Norm McCabe is a fairly capable director, whose very good shorts The Ducktators and Hop and Go (in the bonus section with a mutilated soundtrack) are featured, that I think gets a bad wrap. His [absent] Daffy Ducks are the first ones to really nail the character, and had he not been drafted, he probably would have gotten even better. Then again, if that were the case, Tashlin would have never returned, which would have been a far worse tragedy.
What remains on the disc is strict B-pictures and below. This is what those guys were turning out when they were paying attention to the real classics. The Weakly Reporter, Meet John Doughboy, Wacky Blackout, and Rookie Revue are all terrible cartoons, and only a hardcore sycophant of the directors would defend them. The Friz Freleng ‘educational’ trio (By Word of Mouse, Heir Conditioned, and Yankee Dood It) are snoozers I won’t be looking at any time soon, though there’s some great shtick in Heir with a ‘homeless mother and child’ courtesy of Virgil Ross and Daws Butler.
Disc three, entirely made up of black-and-white cartoons from 1930-35, is strictly fan only territory. I’ll admit to not being a relatively huge Bosko fan (in spite of sightings of me wearing a bootleg t-shirt featuring the character), but the cartoons have such an immature charm to them (Freleng’s drawing style is all over them) that you can’t help but not get a kick out of them. And Bosko’s Picture Show will continue to spark debate over whether Bosko says fuck or not. (It’s sure not fox as the subtitles indicate.) The best of the Merrie Melodies featured is by far You Don’t Know What You’re Doin’, essentially the Fleischers’ Swing You Sinners-lite.
There are three Buddy shorts that are only noteworthy for how bad they are, the first Buddy’s Day Out being so bad it almost closed the studio (Does “woogie woogie” mean sex? I’d be surprised if Buddy ever got laid.) The only thing Buddy proved is that Newton’s Third Law can apply to animated cartoons… That “opposite reaction” sure happened… and how!
Disc four isn’t so much “Most Requested” as it is “Cartoons Jerry Beck Wanted on DVD”, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Clampett’s Horton Hatches the Egg remains the best adaptation of Dr. Seuss to film after Jones’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jones’ cynic masterpieces Fresh Airedale and Chow Hound are both probably in my top ten if I had to make a list, so I am delighted that they were included. Much Ado About Nutting is another contender. In spite of my infamous (?) appearance on Stu Shostak’s Internet radio show, The Oily American is an entertainingly funky cartoon with some very funny animation by Rod Scribner and Herman Cohen. (“Your Thomas-hawk, sir!”) Even if some of the shorts aren’t very good, they’re all at least interesting. Wild Wife is semi-progressive, Lights Fantastics is heaven for any fan of Owen Fitzgerald or Paul Julian’s work, and Goo Goo Goliath may be the only time the designs in a Warner cartoon descended to pure eye rape.
The restorations are near perfect this round. A minor bit of color pumping on a few titles, but nothing terrible. I would have appreciated the original soundtracks to Fifth Column Mouse and Fresh Airedale being restored, but you can’t have everything.
The 1939 gag-reels with the Termite Terrace staff (with commentary by Martha Sigall, identifying everyone) are worth the price of the set alone. There are no cartoons from 1939 featured on this set… I guess that’s why studio-wide the cartoons missed the mark so often that year: they put all their effort into this!
An all-new documentary on Mel Blanc is another highlight in the extra features. I appreciate them letting some of Blanc’s fabrications stand on their own, because as the piece shows, the guy didn’t need to make anything up. It’s hard to say so, because it belies the other talent that went into the films, but those cartoons and characters would never have been as popular if Blanc didn’t do voices for all of them.
The sixth volume is a good closing to the collector sets. Mark Mayerson worries that future non-Golden Collections will mean less room for the obscurer stuff that is seen heavily here, but quite honestly, all of the titles I can think of that I want fully-restored on DVD next are popular character shorts, outside of a handful of one shots by Avery (Sneezing Weasel, Crackpot Quail) and Jones (Fox Pop, Fin n’ Catty, etc.).
If this were a perfect world, the only thing I’d propose at this point is to just release all of them in strict chronological order, in five sets. Four of them would be ten discs, and the fifth would be five discs. Nine/four would be just cartoons, and the tenth/fifth would consist of documentaries and archival footage. They could release them in whatever order they wanted, to get the popular shorts out first, like Another Rainbow did with Carl Barks’ stories. But then again, I’ve already taken the time to get all 1000 of the shorts on my own, so who cares. All I know is I eagerly await whatever Jerry Beck and company come up with next.
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