Daffy Duck & Egghead

Directed by Tex Avery this is an early Looney Tunes cartoon which features a lot of hilarious Avery trademark gags. And stars Daffy Duck and The Pre-pubescent Elmer Fudd. It's a great cartoon with the Looney/Cock-eyed first draft Daffy Duck.

3(***)out of 4(****)stars

Egghead is a hunter and he is hunting for Daffy Duck. Egghead leaves the film to shoot a disruptive audience member in silhouette. A tortoise tries to gentrify the conflict by giving them dueling pistols.

I don't know much about Egghead. This is his second appearance. He essentially serves the same purpose as Elmer Fudd. Obviously, Elmer is superior and would be the one who lasted. Daffy Duck is also different from the later versions. It is a bit rough. Despite the roughness, I do appreciate this early cartoon and I really like shooting one of the audience. There is nothing wrong with killing the audience.

This short features a very early version of Daffy Duck (call it Daffy 1.0) and also Egghead, who would evolve into Elmer Fudd a bit later on. This features one of the zaniest duels of all time! The turtle almost steals the show here! Typical Tex Avery sight gags. A bit more talky than the aerage Avery short, but very good. Well worth seeing. Recommended.

This is Daffy Duck's second episode - one year after "Porky's Duck Hunt" (which is Daffy's debut). This is also Egghead's debut, a Looney Tunes character not nearly as famous. He became Elmer Fudd, which may be surprising to some people. Egghead is basically a hunter who looks hardly anything like Elmer Fudd - and is hunting Daffy. Daffy, who is incredibly crazy here, is not making it easy for Egghead...

I personally prefer this episode a great deal to "Porky's Duck Hunt", which is quite tedious. This episode is a little boring (but interesting historically, as it shows a man in a cinema) at first, but becomes much better. Daffy keeps the gags going and Egghead is quite a good character, with character which reminded me of Porky. The animation and the theme is good as well.

I highly recommend this to anyone who loves Daffy Duck (particularly people who like him when he's crazy) and all Looney Tunes cartoon historians. Unfortunately, this is not really an episode that most of a modern audience would enjoy, but I myself (even though I am "modern") loved it. Enjoy "Daffy Duck and Egghead"! :-)

The first bit of humor is in the "disclaimer" which includes the word "roasted" and then we get the customer pond shot at sunrise which, by the way, is beautifully drawn. There's something about these late '30s/early '40s animated shorts and films that have a distinct watercolor beauty to them.

Next we see "Egghead," a prototype of Elmer Food. Another sign of the times was the silhouette of a man in the movie theater and the character on screen talking to him, usually - as is the case here - telling the person to "sit down." When he doesn't, Egghead shoots him!! (I think Bugs Bunny did that once, too, but I'm not sure.)

This very young and smaller-looking Daffy was not the funny guy he was a decade later, almost a wise-guy. This is almost an introduction to this character as Daffy sings a song explaining who he is.

The funnier characters and real-life people in here were the Italian turtle, Ben Hathaway who wrote some clever sight gags into this story and the director, Tex Avery. Just don't expect laughs from the usually-hilarious Daffy Duck.

This is part of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3.