A Pest in the House

Elmer's the manager of a hotel and Daffy's the bellboy. A tired (and very large) businessman checks in and makes it very clear to Elmer that he needs his rest and if anyone disturbs him, Elmer will suffer the consequences. So Daffy spends the entirety of the short doing one thing after another that disturbs the poor man. Elmer gets the crap beat out of him repeatedly because of Daffy's actions. Fun Elmer & Daffy cartoon, with Daffy as annoying as possible. Several amusing gags and lines. Great voice work from Arthur Q. Bryan and Mel Blanc. Nice animation with lovely colors. The music is lively and whimsical. How much you'll like this probably depends on how much you like earlier Daffy when he was all about being wacky and zany.

Back in the fifties, there was a labour shortage and firms were forced to hire whoever they could. It is for this reason that Daffy finds himself working as a bellhop for Elmer Fudd. When a guest arrives requiring peace and quiet to catch up on sleep but Elmer has to deal with the fact that Daffy is insane.

Being a massive Daffy fan, nothing saddens me more than to see his late 60's stuff (with the like of Speedy Gonzales), so to recover from one such cartoon I returned to this cartoon to find Daffy in suitably `crazy duck' mood. The plot here has a running gag where the guest returns to the front desk to punch Elmer; this works pretty well but it is the actions of Daffy that are the funniest bits of the film.

He is a great character, but he is at his best when he is crazy. His noisy actions are imaginative and hilarious throughout and he dominates the short. Both Fudd and the guest are good but they only really act as punctuation between Daffy's hilarity.

Overall this is proof, if proof was needed, that Daffy was never better than when he was crazy and off the wall. This short is a simple cartoon with a funny running gag but it is Daffy's craziness that makes it such fun to watch.

At face value, "A Pest in the House" looks like the average wacky Looney Tunes cartoon, as bellboy Daffy Duck keeps awaking a sleepy guest who proceeds to punch clerk Elmer Fudd in the nose. But I notice something else. At the beginning, the narrator says that there was a labor shortage, so places would hire anyone...or anything (at which point we meet that famously loony member of the genus Anas*). This cartoon was released in 1947, the year of the Taft-Hartley Act. The Taft-Hartley Act cut off unions' power. Therefore, not only would a labor shortage have made sense, but one could say that they were hiring non-union labor in the form of Daffy Duck.

OK, I've gone irrevocably overboard in trying to analyze this cartoon. I'm sure that in reality, it was just intended as zany entertainment to get shown right before a feature film (and it is really funny). So check it out. And the next time that the phone rings, don't answer; it might be a fist (although in this age of text-messaging cell phones, we're probably safe).

*Anas is the genus to which ducks belong.

PS: the guest looks a little bit like Arthur Q. Bryan, who provided Elmer Fudd's voice. I don't know whether or not that was just a coincidence.

Daffy the bellhop drives a customer batty. He's a big goon who only wants one thing: peace and quiet at the hotel so he can get some sleep. He tells the desk clerk (Elmer Fudd) that if he doesn't get it, he'll punch him in the nose.

"Likable chap, isn't he" asks Daffy to us, the audience. I guess that made it better to endure some guy, since he's pictured as a jerk, getting mentally tortured by our overzealous and crazy bellhop who makes life miserable for the man who wants "peace and quiet" a phrase Daffy uses six times in about 20 seconds. Yeah, this duck could drive anyone crazy! The guy's suite number is 666, too, which is an omen of things to come. Actually, Daffy is trying to help the guy. He's not nasty in here, just ignorant.

Daffy ruins the customer but poor Elmer pays the price. The gags in this one are so-so and our duck friend is so loud and obnoxious he was irritating. Justice was not served in the end, either.

With this cartoon the second consecutive Daffy Duck one I've seen in which he's in his prime, I've now completely recovered from the mediocre one he made with Speedy in the '60s I watched before them. He's a bellhop who unwittingly (or maybe not) disturbs a man who just wants quiet while he sleeps but keeps hitting Elmer the manager as a result of the duck's shenanigans! And this guy's room number is 666! LOL! Hilarious from beginning to end, this Chuck Jones entry just kept me guffawing in due time. I especially loved hearing Mel Blanc's singing as both Daffy and a drunk in the next room when they're both warbling! A Pest in the House is well worth the time for anyone who loves classic Looney Tunes. P.S. How surreal was it to hear Arthur Q. Bryan as both Elmer and that man who threatens to "bust you right in the nose!"?