This movie is notable for being the one and only time that Warner Bros. "loaned out" their famous Looney Tunes characters to appear in a Filmation production (otherwise they were a silent partner). Warner Bros. had shut down their animation studio in 1969. While Warner Bros. had outsourced production to other companies since the 1960s, it was usually to studios run by former Warner Bros. alumni (such as Friz Freleng and later Chuck Jones), something that was not the case with Filmation.
At Horrible Hall, the Groovie Goolies are watching a television interview in which Daffy is talking about his new movie, when their program is interrupted by a ghoulish being calling himself The Phantom of the Flickers; he announces his intention to destroy every film that Daffy Duck and the company ever made, including their current King Arthur film. Being a huge fan of Daffy, Frankie goes to Hollywood to offer his help, and the other Horrible Hall residents go along with him.
Mayhem ensues when the Looney Tunes and the Goolies first meet, but they eventually settle down and continue filming the movie. But when the Phantom disguises himself as each of the Goolies, Daffy and the others then think that they are in league with the Phantom and run off. The Phantom suddenly grabs the film and, disguised as Hauntleroy, tries to escape from the Goolies by running through a magic mirror into "Mad Mirror Land" (where the animation shifts to live action, stop-motion pixilation). Frankie, Drac, and Wolfie chase after him, and after a cartoonishly slapstick pursuit they bring (or more rather sneeze) the Phantom and the film back to the hand-drawn animated world.
The Phantom turns out to be Drac's long-lost uncle Claude Chaney, a formerly famous silent film actor. Chaney's pale complexion left him out of work when color films became popular. Daffy, impressed with Chaney's disguise skills, gives Claude a job. King Arthur wins an Ozzie Award, and the Goolies head for home.
Howard Morris . . . Franklin "Frankie" Frankenstein, Wolfgang "Wolfie" Wolfman, Mummy, "Hauntleroy"
Larry Storch . . . Count Tom Dracula, Hagatha, Claude Chaney/Phantom of the Flickers, Charlie Dog, Marshall Actor, Messenger, Singing Telegram Horse, Announcer, Joust Horses
Jay Scheimer (uncredited) . . . Petunia Pig, Nurse
In February 1971, Jerry Leider, president of Warner Bros. Television, and Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott, president and chairman of Filmation, announced that Warner Bros. had signed a long-term contract with Filmation under which the latter would produce new animated films and future programs based on Warner Bros.' existing film and television characters, titles and properties and Warner Bros. Television would handle distribution exclusively off-network throughout the world. The transaction also called for production of new theatrical cartoons by Filmation for distribution by Warner Bros. to theaters initially and to television subsequently. In addition, Licensing Corp. of America, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., would continue to represent exclusively both Filmation and Warner Bros. properties for character licensing and merchandising. The agreement did not cover network properties to be developed by Filmation, which was represented on CBS with Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies and Archie's Funhouse and on ABC with The Hardy Boys and Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down. Warner Bros.' shows on-network were The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on CBS and Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp on ABC.[3][4][5] In early November, the trades reported that one of Filmation's co-ventures with Warner Bros. was going to be an ABC television series of the Road Runner, which was unfortunately never produced.[6]
In mid-January 1972, Warner Bros. announced an expansion on the agreement, with ten feature animated films, each budgeted at $1 million and set at 90 minutes and announced as a co-production. The three-year project was noted in the trades as being the largest deal of its kind in animation history. The tagline for the series of films was Family Classics, with Warner Bros. holding network and syndication rights. Titles announced were: Treasure Island, Oliver Twist, Cyrano De Bergerac, Swiss Family Robinson, Don Quixote, From the Earth to the Moon, Robin Hood, Noah's Ark, Knights of the Round Table, Arabian Nights, and Jack London's Call of the Wild. All of the works were based on books or concepts in the public domain, but not animated by any other studio. Warner Bros. was owned at that point by Kinney National Company, and with Filmation owned by the TelePrompTer Corporation, the cable market was being closely eyed for these films as a continual revenue stream. This meant that Filmation could employ an animation team of 400 people year-round.[7]
According to Scheimer, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies was the strangest project for Filmation that came from their deal with Warner Bros., who had shut down their animation department in 1969. They had the rights to use some of Warner Bros.' characters, so they hired Chuck Menville and Len Janson to write the film's story, in which the Groovie Goolies went to Hollywood to meet the Looney Tunes characters. They used a lot of the main Looney Tunes characters, except Bugs Bunny (who had not been seen since the closure of the Warner Bros. studio in 1964), Speedy Gonzales and the Road Runner. Veteran voice actor Mel Blanc provided the voices of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Foghorn Leghorn, Wile E. Coyote and Pepé Le Pew, though they sounded a little different from the classic shorts; Filmation incorrectly pitched and sped up Blanc's voice recordings for Daffy and Tweety higher and faster than normal, to the point that the former sounded a lot like his early "screwball" incarnation by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett or Woody Woodpecker, and forgot to speed up Porky's voice. Elmer, Sylvester, Foghorn, Wile E. and Pepé's voices sounded deeper than usual, due to Blanc not being thrilled about working on the special and not doing Elmer's voice to his satisfaction (Elmer's normal voice actor, Arthur Q. Bryan, died many years before). Yosemite Sam is the only character who does not sound different from the classic shorts. Larry Storch and Howard Morris reprised their roles as Drac, Hagatha (Storch), Frankie, Wolfie, Mummy and Hauntleroy (Morris). The villain of the story, the Phantom of the Flickers, was a parody of The Phantom of the Opera, voiced by Storch, with the name "Claude Chaney" derived from Lon Chaney, Sr. (who played the title role in the 1925 film) and Claude Rains (who starred in the 1943 film).[8] Additional voices were provided by Storch, Scheimer, and his wife Jay Scheimer (as Petunia Pig and the Nurse). Most of the Warner Bros. characters were drawn well (veteran Warner Bros. animator Virgil Ross was working there at the time, along with other animators that had worked for Warner Bros. in the late 1960s, such as Laverne Harding and Ed Solomon), though Wile E. and Pepé were drawn scruffier than usual.
The live-action segment was filmed in Westlake Village near Thousand Oaks, and used stop motion, pixilation and undercranking to enable the actors to move like cartoon characters, such as when the Goolies drive imaginary cars down the road and Drac appears to fly. Menville and Janson had previously used the technique for three short films of their own: Stop Look and Listen, Blaze Glory and Sergeant Swell of the Mounties. The actors playing the monsters were music producer Ed Fournier as Frankie, musician Emory Gordy Jr. as "Hauntleroy", Dick Monda as Drac, and songwriter Jeffrey Thomas as Wolfie.[9] The segment was a modified version of an unused segment for Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies, named "The Haunted Heist", in which the Goolies chase the real Hauntleroy into Mad Mirror Land after Hauntleroy steals Wolfie's guitar. It would later air in reruns in 1975 and as part of the syndicated The Groovie Goolies and Friends anthology series in 1978.[10]
After Filmation produced the film, as well as Oliver Twist and Treasure Island (both of which had been finished by late 1973), Warner Bros. decided to drop the Family Classics line, due to a test screening for Oliver Twist that did not go well.[11]
Reception
The special is not liked by many Looney Tunes fans due to its limited animation and weak storyline. In That's All, Folks! The Art of Warner Bros. Animation, Steve Schneider dismissed the film as "a low moment in Warner's animation; the less said about this work, the better".[12] Animation historian Jerry Beck called the film "the low point in the history of animation" and "an abominable mess, with limited animation, voices sped up incorrectly and an annoying laugh track (not to mention the bland stock background music)".[13][14] Michael N. Salda called it "the worst Arthurian cartoon ever" in his book Arthurian Animation: A Study of Cartoon Camelots on Film and Television, stating, "Even an all-star cast could not overcome Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies's pedestrian draftsmanship, inconsistent voices, humorless gags, stock music loops, and empty characterization. The two segments devoted directly to Daffy's King Arthur film are no better than the rest of the cartoon that encompasses them. It is painful to watch. If the rest of the cartoon were any better, one could argue that Daffy's producer/director/actor effort is supposed to be deeply flawed, as it is, for example, in Daffy Duck in Hollywood, Hollywood Daffy and The Scarlet Pumpernickel. These three earlier cartoons were fine Warner Bros. releases that entertained even as, and because, they underscored Daffy's arrogance and many foibles. But Daffy's embedded King Arthur film is as unrelentingly weak as Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies itself. There is no joke here. Despite the conclusion that shows Daffy proudly accepting an 'Ozzie' for King Arthur and making a speech in which he thanks himself repeatedly as producer, director, star, et cetera, the rest of the world took a dimmer view of Filmation's cartoon. Although the Phantom of the Flickers was speaking exclusively of Daffy's Arthurian film when he judged it a 'full-length flop', his condemnation could easily be extended to Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies and much of Arthurianimation in the 1960s and early 1970s as a whole."[15]
Availability
This movie has never been officially released on home video in the United States (due to various rights issues), but traders on the Internet have been recording and selling DVDs of this film, most of which were originally black-and-white kinescopes of the original broadcast.
Distributor Select Video released the film in a number of European countries, including Germany and Denmark.[16] The German version of the movie was released in 1983 as Groovie Goolies: Muntere Monster in Hollywood ("Groovie Goolies: Groovie Goolies in Hollywood"), and re-released in 1986 as Duffy Duck und Co. ("Daffy Duck and Co."), and again in 1990 as Die Lustige Monster Show: Duffy Duck und Co. in Hollywood ("Groovie Goolies: Daffy Duck and Co. in Hollywood"). The original laugh track from the movie was removed for these releases. In January 1985, the movie was released by Select Video in the UK as Groovie Ghouls, and was on sale at Woolworth's. In those instances, the live-action sequence was not present, and it was replaced by an out-of-shot collision before rejoining the original animated sequence. The sequence in these releases was cut for time, as the German versions contained trailers for other Select Video titles. Another notable feature of the German and UK releases was that the Select Video ident was shorter, and had no jingle. In addition, the end credits were different, as they had to edit out the names of the actors in the live-action sequence which was not included, and also had other credits, presumably for Europe-based post-production at Select Video.[17]
Despite the aforementioned rights issues, the film remains part of the Groovie Goolies syndication package (split into two half-hours), as of the mid-2000s,[18] and has been rebroadcast several times on television. On January 1, 1983, the movie was broadcast on Antenne 2 in France as Les Croque-monstres à Hollywood ("Groovie Goolies in Hollywood").[19]Sky One broadcast the movie in the United Kingdom on July 4, 1992.[20]USA Network broadcast the movie as a Halloween special in the mid-to-late 1990s shortly before it stopped broadcasting cartoons altogether.[21] The movie was broadcast on German television as Monsterparty auf Schloß Blutenburg: Daffy Duck und das Phantom Der Seifenoper ("Groovie Goolies: Daffy Duck and the Phantom of the Flickers") in 2002, 2007 and 2013.[22][23]
References
^Erickson, Hal (2005). Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 Through 2003 (2nd ed.). McFarland & Co. p. 55. ISBN978-1476665993.
^Lehman, Christopher P. (2014). American Animated Cartoons of the Vietnam Era: A Study of Social Commentary in Films and Television Programs, 1961-1973. McFarland & Co. p. 172. ISBN9780786451425.
^Scheimer, Lou; Mangels, Andy (December 15, 2012). Creating The Filmation Generation. TwoMorrows. ISBN9781605490441. Retrieved 21 November 2023. We also made a deal with Warner Bros., to produce animated films for them.
^Scheimer, Lou; Mangels, Andy (December 15, 2012). Creating The Filmation Generation. TwoMorrows. ISBN9781605490441. Retrieved 21 November 2023. On February 1, 1971, more information came out about our deal with Warner. The agreement was that we would create animated films based on existing WB film and TV characters, titles, and properties, which would then be distributed exclusively off-network on a global basis. We were also supposed to animate feature films for Warner. Said projects would be sold around the world by Licensing Corp. of America (which was licensing Warner and National-DC properties at the time), although CMA remained our agent. Although WB TV head Gerald J. Leider announced the deal, our contact at Warner was Jacqueline Smith. This deal led to a very strange collaboration in 1972, and a few other interesting projects, before changing into something else entirely.
^Scheimer, Lou; Mangels, Andy (December 15, 2012). Creating The Filmation Generation. TwoMorrows. ISBN9781605490441. Retrieved 21 November 2023. In early November the trades reported that one of our co-ventures with Warner was going to be an ABC series of the Road Runner. Let's just say that plans for that went the way of most of Wile E. Coyote's plans... but it didn't mean our deal with Warner wasn't about to take some interesting turns.
^Scheimer, Lou; Mangels, Andy (December 15, 2012). Creating The Filmation Generation. TwoMorrows. ISBN9781605490441. Retrieved 21 November 2023. In mid-January 1972, Warner announced an expansion on their agreement with us from the previous year, with ten feature animated films—each budgeted at $1 million and set at 90-minutes—announced as a co-production. The three-year project was noted in trades as being the largest deal of its kind in animation history. The tagline for the series of films was "Family Classics", and Warner held network and syndication rights. Titles announced were: Oliver Twist, Cyrano De Bergerac, Swiss Family Robinson, Don Quixote, From the Earth to the Moon, Robin Hood, Noah's Ark, Knights of the Round Table, Arabian Nights, and Jack London's Call of the Wild. All of the works were based on books or concepts in the public domain, but not animated by any other studio. Warner was owned at that point by Kinney Services, a cable TV company, and with us owned by TelePrompTer the cable market—and the eventual home video market—was being closely eyed for these films as a continual revenue stream, not unlike Disney's features. For us it meant we could employ an animation team of 400 people year-round!
^Scheimer, Lou; Mangels, Andy (December 15, 2012). Creating The Filmation Generation. TwoMorrows. ISBN9781605490441. Retrieved 21 November 2023. That was the weirdest project for us and really sprang out of that deal we had with Warner Bros. We had the rights to use some of their characters, so we did this special in which the Groovie Goolies came out to Hollywood and wanted to meet the Warner Bros. characters. We used a lot of the main Warner characters, except Bugs Bunny and the little mouse guy, Speedy Gonzales. And I think it's one of the few times we used that wonderful voice actor, Mel Blanc, although he may have been ill then. He had a terrible accident, and that may be the time his son did some stuff for us, imitating his dad. The villain of the story was "Claude Chaney", which was our little nod to Lon Chaney and Claude Rains. Overall, it was really a strange project.
^Scheimer, Lou; Mangels, Andy (December 15, 2012). Creating The Filmation Generation. TwoMorrows. ISBN9781605490441. Retrieved 21 November 2023. There was a live-action segment in this special with the Goolies as well, in which they went through "Mad Mirror Land" into the real world, chasing after the disguised Phantom of the Flickers. We filmed it in a kind of stop-motion called "pixelation", so they had kind of a cartoon feel. That even enabled us to have Drac appear to fly by flapping his cape without using wires to hold him up. It was filmed in Westlake Village near Thousand Oaks. The four guys who portrayed the live-action monsters were: Michael Richard Monda, a.k.a. "Daddy Dewdrop" (Drac); songwriter Jeffrey Thomas (Wolfie); musician Emory Lee Gordy, Jr. (Hauntleroy); and music producer Ed Fournier (Frankie). They did a great job portraying their animated counterparts, and, if we had pursued any live Goolies show, they would have been a lock for it.
^Scheimer, Lou; Mangels, Andy (December 15, 2012). Creating The Filmation Generation. TwoMorrows. ISBN9781605490441. Retrieved 21 November 2023. We had completed work on Oliver Twist, and I think even on Treasure Island from our deals with Warner. And then Warner changed their mind and decided to drop the "animated classics" line. I think they did one test screening for Oliver Twist, which didn't go well, and they just dropped it all. And we were then out $50,000 per picture because we put in more than they gave us to do them.
^Schneider, Steve (1988). That's All, Folks!: The Art of Warner Bros. Animation. Henry Holt and Co. pp. 132–133. ISBN0-8050-0889-6.
