The Looney Tunes Golden Collection on DVD

Volume two

The first blurb on the back of the box says it all: “Fully restored. Completely Uncut. Totally Looney!” Yep, those classic Warner Brother cartoons are finally making it to DVD, and boy have they put together a great package here!

The Golden Collection is the ultimate, so far, Looney Tunes collection. There’s also a premier collection available, but it’s a single disc containing only 28 cartoons. This Golden Collection puts 56 classic cartoons onto four discs, and adds a bunch of great extras to the mix that fans of this particular brand of mayhem will love.

Alas, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and while we absolutely love this collection, we wish it were about twice as long (Do you think there’ll be a Volume 2 coming? We sure hope so!), because while a lot of our favorites are here, a lot aren’t. So for every “Rabbit of Seville” that’s here, there’s a “What’s Opera Doc?” that isn’t, and for each Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century you get, you miss “One Froggy Evening.”

Still, one can’t really complain. There’s a pile of laughs here and, perhaps best of all, the cartoons have been restored and they look simply wonderful. They aren't perfect; you can clearly see specks and other flaws that have made it through the restoration process, but on the whole they've done a terrific job. You can see how the cartoons look unrestored on some of the extras, and the difference is like day to night: the “refreshed” versions are a delight.

Here’s a listing of the cartoons included in this set:

Disc 1 - Bugs Bunny
• Baseball Bugs, Rabbit Seasoning, Long-Haired Hare, High Diving Hare, Bully for Bugs, What's Up Doc?, Rabbit's Kin, Water, Water Every Hare, Big House Bunny, Big Top Bunny, My Bunny Lies over the sea, Wabbit Twouble, Ballot Box Bunny, Rabbit of Seville
Disc 2 - Daffy Duck & Porky the Pig
• Duck Amuck, Dough for the Do-Do, Drip-Along Daffy, Scaredy Cat, The Ducksters, The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Yankee Doodle Daffy, Porky Chops, Wearing of the Grin, Deduce, You Say, Boobs in the Woods, Golden Yeggs, Rabbit Fire, Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century
Disc 3 - All Stars
• Elmer's Candid Camera, Bugs Bunny and The 3 Bears, Fast and Furry-ous, Hair-Raising Hare, The Awful Orphan, Haredevil Hare, For Scent-imental Reasons, Frigid Hare, The Hypo-Chondri-Cat , Baton Bunny, Feed the Kitty, Don't Give Up The Sheep, Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, Tortoise Wins By A Hare
Disc 4 - All Stars
• Canary Row, Bunker Hill Bunny, Kit for Cat, Putty Tat Trouble, Bugs and Thugs, Canned Feud, Lumber Jerks, Speedy Gonzales, Tweety's S.O.S., Foghorn Leghorn, The, Daffy Duck Hunt, Early to Bet, Broken Leghorn, Devil May Hare

So if nothing else, it’s a good cross section of the famous Looney Tunes library. Plus the extras, which we'll tackle below.

The aspect ratio is the original 4:3, 1.33:1 full frame, so the programs aren’t 16x9 TV compatible, but despite that they still look darn good even when stretched to fill the widescreen TV. We found the best setting for the cartoons was the “full” one used for anamorphic sources; while it stretched the picture the most, we didn’t notice the distortion as much on these cartoons as we would with live action figures, while on the other hand the full “anamorphic” setting didn’t add any unwanted pixilization to the cartoons and you didn't have anything sliced off the edges of the picture. It was a workable compromise.

And then there are the extras, which are almost worth the price of admission. Some of the cartoons are accompanied by commentary tracks, isolated music tracks, or even short documentaries, and while they vary in interest there’s some good stuff.

Each disc also has its own section of bonus material, including documentaries (some of which are quite long and extensive) on the people behind these classics. You get features on the people of “Termite Terrace,” the horrible-sounding dump in which these talented visionaries were housed, information on the great Carl Stalling who composed and conducted the orchestral tracks that are now so famous.

You also get excerpts from the original prime time Bugs Bunny Show, tributes, and a bunch of other stuff.

It’s a wonderful collection but, since we were left wanting more, we sincerely hope “That’s NOT all, folks!”

Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2

Okay, volume one was better, at least as far as this reviewer is concerned, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t enough classics here to warrant opening your wallet.

Besides, how can one live without having every Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon possible in one's library?

Chief among the new titles are “One Froggy Evening” and “What’s Opera, Doc?”, two of the best cartoons ever (regardless of the originating studio) and each of these masterpieces has an accompanying documentary that puts them into their historical (or should it be hysterical?) perspective.

One Froggy Evening is the cartoon about the singing frog who’ll only sing when there’s no one to hear him except for his human “master.” It’s a wonderful morality tale as well as being very funny. Ditto with “Opera,” Chuck Jones’ vision of Wagner as performed by Bugs and Elmer. It isn’t nearly as funny as some of the best of the WB howlers, but it has so much else going for it (including the authentic ballet moves as performed by cartoon characters for whom the laws of physics don’t necessarily apply) that it’s an absolute must have.

Both of those toons are on Disc 4 of this four disc set

Disc 1 features that wascally wabbit we all know and love, and includes such classics as Broomstick Bunny (with audio commentary) and Little Red Riding Rabbit. Special features on this disc include a convesation with Tex Avery, one of the most innovative of the early animators, and Bugs Bunny's Looney Tunes All-Star 50th Anniversary TV Special, part one.

Disc 2 features the Road Runner and his nemesis Wile E. Coyote, with extras including the TV pilot "The Adventures of the Road Runner." Disc 3 focuses in on Sylvester and Tweety fun with some classic Porky Pig thrown in. Extras on disc three include part two of the Anniversary special that began on disc one.

Disc 4 is an all-star cavalcade of toons, including the abovementioned "One Froggy Evening" and "What's Opera, Doc?". There's also such other shining lights as "The Three Little Bops" and the wonderful "Corny Concerto," the latter of which puts Looney Tunes animation to the music of Strauss. Extras include So Much for So Little, an Oscar-winning documentary/short.

All 60 toons have been restored and remastered and, unlike what they've apparently done to the versions shown on politically correct TV these days, they're all unedited.

The cartoons are presented in their original 1.33:1 full frame aspect ratio and the picture quality is generally very good. There's some grain and dirt that are undoubtedly a result of age, but the overall quality is very satisfying. Audio is Dolby Digital mono and it's fine, though we though the volume was a tad low for our tastes.

Between the toons, the documentaries, the commentaries and the music only tracks, there's a lot of meat here for fans of classic Warner Brothers animation.

Between the first two volumes you'd think they'd have released all of the greatest of the Looney Tunes universe, but you'd be wrong. We can think of at least four masterpieces that haven't appeared on either volume, so we're pumped for Volume 3 and hope to see -Beanstalk Bunny, Ali Baba Bunny ("I'm rich! I'm comfortable well off!"), Transylvania 6-5000 and the wonderful Robin Hood Daffy (Yoiks! and Away!) included on them.

And how about a Tex Avery collection, and one of the old black and white toons?

Still, this is a marvelous trip down memory lane and we highly recommend it.

Here's a listing of the toons on the four discs:

# 1 (Bugs Bunny) - The Big Snooze; Broomstick Bunny; Bugs Bunny Rides Again; Bunny Hugged; French Rabbit; Gorilla My Dreams; The Hare-Brained Hypnotist; Hare Conditioned; The Heckling Hare; Little Red Riding Rabbit; Tortoise Beats Hare; Rabbit Transit; Slick Hare; Baby Buggy Bunny; Hyde and Hare

# 2 (Road Runner and friends) - Beep Beep; Going Going Gosh; Zipping Along Stop Look and Hasten; Ready Set Zoom; Guided Muscle; Gee Whiz-z-z-z; There They Go-Go-Go; Scarambled Aches; Zoom and Bored; Whoa Be Gone; Cheese Chasers; The Dover Boys; Mouse Wreckers; Bear for Punishment

# 3 (Sylvester/Tweety and friends) - Bad Ol' Putty Tat; All Abir-r-r-d; Room and Bird; Tweet Tweet Tweety; Gift Wrapped; Ain't She Tweet; A Bird in a Guilty Cage; Snow Business; Tweety Pie; Kitty Kornered; Baby Bottleneck; Old Glory; The Great Piggy Bank Robbery; Duck Soup to Nuts; Porky in Wackyland (B/W)

# 4 (Looney Tunes All-Stars) - Back Alley Oproar; Book Revue; Corny Concerto; Have You Got Any Castles; Hollywood Steps Out; I Love to Singa; Katnip Kollege; The Hep Cat; Three Little Bops; One Froggy Evening; Rhapsody Rabbit; Show Biz Bugs; Stage Door Cartoon What's Opera Doc; You Ought To Be in Pictures

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