Devil's Feud Cake

The 1960s were a bad time for cartoons at Warner Brothers. The artistic quality of their classic cartoons has slipped badly. Gone were the old beautifully rendered backgrounds and fluid animation and in their place were cheaper looking cartoons. Sure, the old characters remained but they were clearly being made with a fraction of money and care as they used to be. A terrific example is "Devil's Feud Cake"--a cartoon so cheap, so crappy that it boggles the mind and shows the studio simply didn't care any more.

This cartoon is a mess. Instead of new material, they've taken several older cartoons and cut them to pieces. To link all this material involving Yosimite Sam and Bugs Bunny, a new plot was added involving the Devil and Sam. What's really infuriating are that the change in artwork style and quality is easily apparent to anyone, as the short film bounces from nice older artwork to crappier new artwork. More important is that the cartoon simply isn't funny. A poor excuse for a cartoon and one of the worst Looney Tunes releases you can find--as bad as any of the Speedy Gonzales/Daffy Duck mash-ups--and they are also incredibly bad. Cheap and bad.

Yosemite Sam dies and goes to Hell, where the Devil sends him back to Earth in order to get Bugs. It's a "clip show" cartoon, folks. That means footage from older shorts is used here with the only new footage being the parts with Sam in Hell. As you can see from the reviewers before me, this sort of cost-cutting stunt doesn't sit well with many fans. I'm being a bit more forgiving than the other reviewers, however. I know that after you've seen so many of the old classic shorts, you appreciate the great ones more and really hate the cheap lazy ones like this. I totally get that but, to be fair, viewed on its own terms this isn't a terrible cartoon. The average kid who might come across this on television today won't know or care about the fact that it's cobbled together from other shorts. The old footage is fun, after all. The new isn't that hot but I did like the final joke. One thing that really stands out when watching this is that the new animation is really pitiful spliced together with the superior older stuff, before WB animation started to go to...well, Hell.

This should have been so much better, what a disappointment. First of all it is completely unnecessary, basically as I said in my summary it is little more than recycled material with a lacklustre plot and underplayed character personas. Secondly, it is too bizarre for words, I have seen a few cartoons with one toon character going to hell or having something to do with the devil, and this is not one of the better ones. In fact, this is one of the most disappointing and one of the worst Looney Tunes cartoons I have seen.

What are my reasons for thinking so? The plot is really lacklustre, lacks structure and is very unevenly paced. Basically it is Yosemite doing something as he always does, he goes to hell, makes a pact with the devil to bring the rabbit for his freedom. Talk about wasted imagination! The recycled material from Roman Legion-Hare and Sahara Hare, two infinitely better cartoons, was a delight to see, but they were not well placed in the cartoon and didn't serve their purpose well.

The animation didn't fare much better either. In fact, the animation was better in the recycled material, that is not supposed to happen. What was wrong with the animation? Too clumsy and slipshod for my liking with lifeless colours and backgrounds and cheap editing. The music lacks energy and quirkiness here too, and the sound effects are not great at all. Then there is the dialogue, where was the wit, the sparkle, the lunacy and the fun? It was gone, there were attempts, but the thing was it wasn't funny. The sight gags aren't great either, too predictable and forced- the one with the parachute is the only one that kind of works, and the ending came of no real surprise. Bugs is very underplayed and woefully underused, Yosemite has no sparkle in him and the devil himself was just there really with dialogue we've all heard before.

In fact, the only redeeming quality was Mel Blanc's voice characterisations, which I knew it would be, because Blanc was the sort of voice actor who gave it everything he got no matter how lacklustre the material was. The rest is a misconceived mess, and to be ideally avoided. 1/10 for Blanc. Bethany Cox