Pancho's Hideaway

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.

Speedy Gonzales is not a favourite character of mine and his cartoons, whether it's with Daffy Duck, Sylvester or other characters, are extremely variable. Leaning more towards having more average or more misses than hits, even the hits rarely rise above very good. There is the agreement here that 'Pancho's Hideaway' is, as well as a Freleng-DePatie milestone (as said their first cartoon for Warner Brothers, is one of the better faring cartoons when Looney Tunes was starting to decline.

There are serious issues still here in 'Pancho's Hideaway', though fewer than many of the cartoons from 1965 onwards (namely the worst of the Daffy/Speedy series and that for Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote) certainly and all done far worse in those cartoons. There are also things that are done well.

Budget and time constraints, with the budget being lower, resources being fewer and time constraints tighter, show in the animation. This aspect is very limited, apart from some good flow in how the characters move, especially in the scrappy and incomplete-looking backgrounds. The story is basic and obvious, not an awful lot to it and the predictability factor is high.

Know that comparing Bill Lava unfavourably to Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn is unfair, but it is difficult not to when the quality difference is so big. Lava did worse later, but the score is not an appealing one in sound, lacks energy and doesn't fit very well with the action.

However, Speedy is not annoying, serves a purpose and actually is in a situation where he is treated sympathetically. Pancho, a Mexican Yosemite Sam as said, is the funnier and more interesting character and steals the show. The chemistry between the two is entertaining, gels well and makes sense with the characters not being mismatched and the pursuit being justified.

The dialogue is not particularly fresh but it is quite sharp-witted and amusing and there is a crisp pace throughout. The gags are nothing innovative but raised still a number of smiles and laughs. The ending is a highlight.

Mel Blanc's vocals as expected are very exuberant and full of vigour, few actors have voiced multiple characters in one cartoon alone and give all of them a different identity with such conviction.

Overall, pretty good for past prime Looney Tunes. 7/10 Bethany Cox

With Warner Bros. having closed it's animation department, Friz Freleng and David DePatie formed their own animation studio and sold their work to Warner Bros. "Pancho's Hideaway" was one of the first cartoons to come from this new partnership. The cartoon basically has a Mexican version of Yosemite Sam terrorizing a town, and so Speedy Gonzales goes to deal with him.

I read about how the Freleng-DePatie animation studio had to have lower budgets, and so the characters in their cartoons had limited movement. While the characters' movements don't really sway my opinion of the cartoon, Bill Lava's music could never compare with Carl Stalling's music. And anyway, they'd pretty much run out of clever ideas by this point. They probably shouldn't have continued making cartoons after WB closed the animation studio (by which point the cartoons had pretty much passed their prime). Worth seeing otherwise.

Speedy Gonzales isn't really my favorite looney tunes character of all time, but I don't think there's anything sincerely wrong with him. But this cartoon was a staple of my childhood, (slightly giving a bias rating because of that but whatever). This cartoon has a lot more energy put into it than some of the other speedy cartoons, and the jokes actually nail in this one.

Yosemite sam is a favorite of mine, So it's great seeing a relative of some sort in this cartoon.

Blanc's voice acting is perfect, and the animation backgrounds are pretty exquisite.

As a standout here, it's definitely that little edited montage with speedy getting coins and Pancho getting annoyed, its pretty unique.

All in all, A really great Looney tune, and it gets a flat 9/10.

After Warner Bros. closed their cartoon studio in 1963, two of it's former employees-director Friz Freleng and producer David DePatie-formed DFE Films and initially used the Warner backlot as their base of operations. This was their first production in partnership with their former employer. Yosemite Sam...uh, Pancho Vanilla has robbed the Mexican bank. Speedy Gonzalas-The Fastest Mouse in All Mexico, has vowed to get all the money back. I'll stop there and just say the explosions are still pretty funny here. The animation, by this period, was a little more limited but there's still good movement here and there. Later on, Freleng and DePatie would create their own characters necessitating a move away from the Warner Bros. studio starting with The Pink Panther. Anyway, I enjoyed Pancho's Hideaway.

I'm with everyone else who finds this to be one of the better '60s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts. I grew up on watching the LT/MM cartoons from that decade, but I knew nothing of the history nor saw any problems with the majority of them at the time. After reading about it, I do know and see why many people have beef with them now, as from the mid-late '60s, in the Depatie-Freleng Enterprises and Warner Bros. 7 Arts eras, especially with the infamous Daffy vs. Speedy cartoons, this was around the time that the series was considered to decline in quality in every technical aspect of them. I didn't know that was due to lower budget and that budget was what affected how the cartoons resulted. The majority of viewers seem to detest most, if not all, of those, so much they'd rather at least pretend that they don't exist and the DFE and W-7 Arts shorts never happened. They would soon prove to be too much worlds apart from many shorts prior to these eras, in how the art style and animation evolved, or as some would rather put it, devolved or degraded.

But as the first WB cartoon under DFE, it made for a great, strong start. It also marked the first featurette using William Lava's repetitive rearrangement of The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down, in addition to the abstract, stylized WB logo title card with a black background rather than the WB shield within the rings, as they appeared throughout much of the series' run. I believe I prefer the previous intro and outro cards more too. Anyway, a Mexican, Yosemite Sam-esque bandit known as Pancho Vanilla goes on a robbery spree. So it's up to Mexican mouse, Speedy Gonzales, to tango with Pancho to get the stolen money back from him and to the bank.

I didn't have any favorite Speedy cartoons growing up, but I think that this would most likely be one for me. What more can I say about this? Well, the animation quality is still good enough next to several others following this. Pancho is more suited to go against Speedy and it would've been better if there were more shorts featuring him and less of Daffy going against Speedy instead, and I wish there were. Would've liked to see how others would've been done. There should've been more featuring him and deservedly so. Seeing all the moments with Pancho constantly get foiled in some way or another by Speedy are hilarious, of course. Recommended, as it's definitely one of the '60s LT/MM 'toons worth seeing more than once.