"Daffy and Porky Meet the Groovie Goolies!"

Here's an interesting early Christmas gift for you all: the nearly-complete and RARE 1972 Filmation TV special: "Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies!"







I'm sure some of you remember that by this time, most of us Looney Tunes stars were out of work. Warner Bros. Animation closed its doors in 1969, and aside from TV reruns and comic appearances, Looney Tune activity was pretty much dormant during this time (sounds kinda like 2004-2010, doesn't it? ) So, ABC decided that for one of their "ABC Saturday Superstar" TV episodes, they bring us back, and so Warner Bros., desparate to still make money off us, loaned us out to Filmation Associates to co-star with their popular Groovie Goolies characters! (It was like the Animaniacs episode "Back in Style.") Bugs Bunny, however, refused to participate. He had become a hippie ever since 1969, and also disliked the idea of us being in a Hanna-Barbera -esque cartoon (this is one reason why he did not want to work for the Looney Tunes in the 1964-1969 period.) So, Daffy talked Filmation into letting HIM be the star on the Looney Tunes side, and he did get his way, except Filmation had him share his title with Porky (I think this was due to the popularity of "The Porky Pig Show.")

It was not one of our finest productions. We had a twangy "mod" soundtrack for the music that reminded me of Bill Lava's Looney Tunes work (it was mostly recycled from the "Groovie Goolies" and "Sabrina" shows), and budget constraints also didn't help. Filming only took two days in September of 1972!

I had a bad fur day when filming began, but Filmation did not want me to groom it. And even though the Road Runner was absent, they still insisted I only communicate via signs. I do chuckle a couple of times, but that was pantomime with a different voice dubbed over.


Pepe Le Pew also couldn't get his fur groomed in time, and so he looked like some late 1960s Hanna-Barbera skunk character that Iwao Takamoto designed! He wasn't too happy about being cast as a villain in that "King Arthur" production, and he was also getting over a cold, so his voice sounded strange.


We had to walk and run in a certain way, sort of a Hanna-Barbera style. They limited our abilities to move around.
In fact, it also reminded me quite a bit of the later Bill Hendricks/Warner Bros. - Seven Arts cartoons. We even were using Hanna-Barbera's sound effects, but they were of an inferior sound quality as if they were copied off three generations! (Warner Bros. Animation's small collection of the H-B effects had them in better sound quality.) I did come into Warner Bros. Animation a few times in 1968 for filming a few bits for the "Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour," and things there were quite different then than back in the 1950s and early 1960s! Daffy Duck still looked like how he appeared in those shorts at times, but luckily he wasn't acting all bitter and greedy (people were criticizing Daffy's behavior during the 1960s, so he decided to tone it down.) Instead, he was acting more like how he was back in the early 1950s. It was a relief to work with a more friendlier Daffy again. But as for his voice, the reason was that he was trying to have some kind of operation to keep him looking and acting young, but the initial time, they screwed up his vocal chords, making him sound like how he did in his earliest cartoons! I was even half-expecting Daffy to jump around and start shouting "Woo-hoo, woo-hoo!" at times, but Filmation forbade Daffy from doing that (they said they didn't have enough film for that.) Daffy did let the fame go to his head for a while, though!
Porky Pig's voice was off because he just had his tonsils taken out, and so his voice needed to recover for a bit. As for Petunia, her voice was so high and nasally that it hurt the directors' ears, so they just had someone else re-dub all of her lines in post, making her sound VERY strange and a bit annoying (though not as annoying as the dumbed-down fast-talking Lola Bunny of the Looney Tunes Show!)
They also added that loud, echoey laugh track in post. I remember when I heard they were going to add a laugh track, I was expecting it to be a bit softer, and more like Hanna-Barbera's at the time, but it wasn't.

The Goolies themselves were cool, though. I remember asking why Drac did not have a Transylvanian accent, and he said that he is only a descendant of the original Count Dracula when not on camera, and he felt the accent would be too cliched. Even his uncle Claude Chaney (playing the Phantom of the Flickers in this) was pretty interesting, and was truly adept at disguise. His Daffy Duck mask looked a bit freaky though:

(I'm just glad he didn't have one of ME at the time )

Here's a video a friend of mine did, trying to fix up some of the voices using iMovie:

I wonder why Filmation didn't bother doing so when they were editing this back in 1972...

Hope you all enjoy it! And I apologize for any nightmares or trauma this may all cause. Looking back, to me it's more of a "so bad it's good" production, and is WAY better than "See Ya Later Gladiator!"

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Genius.