Duck Amuck (1953)

Starring: Mel Blanc
Grade: Classic

Duck Amuck is riddled with a variety of landscapes and environments in a brief running time, but I want to give a special shoutout to when Daffy is at his last straw and demands the artist show himself before the white door is drawn in front of him. The background behind him looks like something out of an art museum in the avant-garde section. Considering this short is pure art in general, the look of this final frame is like a meta-like recognition of what they’ve done.

And what they did was create one of the greatest animated shorts of all time.

Starring

In a medieval landscape of sorts, Daffy Duck (Blanc) appears dressed like a Musketeer while telling the other Musketeers to stand back because he’s got things under control. He lunges forward with his sword to an antagonist that isn’t there. Quickly after moving forward a few steps, he finds himself inside of a blank landscape as if the animators didn’t finish drawing anything past the initial scene. Breaking the fourth wall, Daffy asks whoever is in charge where the scenery is. He steps off camera for a second, and the animator paints a landscape of farmland and a barn. Daffy jumps on screen with his sword still in Musketeer mode until he sees the barn behind him. A little agitated, Daffy decides to roll with it, and he jumps offscreen for a moment. Next, he comes back onto the screen wearing overalls and carrying a hoe while singing about his farm. This only lasts seconds before Daffy walks into a new icy landscape complete with an igloo in the background. Looking directly at the unseen animator, an annoyed Daffy asks him to make up his mind. Dragging his hoe behind him, he exits the screen. Following this, he jumps back onscreen with a full winter getup, singing and skiing through the snowy landscape. Of course, this only lasts momentarily before he ends up in a beach landscape. Without saying a word, he switches costumes again and plays a ukulele and sings while wearing a Hawaiin style getup. This also goes on for only a few seconds before Daffy ends up in a landscape of nothing. It’s just a white background, and Daffy turns to the unseen animator to remind him that this is a cartoon, and they need scenery in a cartoon. As he makes his speech, the animator uses a pencil to erase him completely.

Daffy’s voice is heard asking where he is, and he’s quickly repainted as a cowboy holding a guitar. Shrugging, Daffy goes to play the guitar, but there is no noise. Holding a sign that says, “Sound please!”, he is given it. However, once he strums the guitar, the sound of a machine gun follows it. He strums it again, and it’s the sound of a car horn. He slams the guitar on the ground to break it and the sounds of a donkey are heard. He cleans up the guitar’s broken pieces, walks offscreen, and comes back onscreen without the cowboy getup. Now, Daffy is mad. He tries to yell, but the sound of a rooster comes out of his mouth. Following that is a laugh, the sound of a monkey, and then a squeak. Finally, Daffy snaps.

Unfortunately, he’s at the mercy of this animator, and this animator is quite the stinker.

My Thoughts:

Of all the Looney Tunes shorts that have graced our screens over the years, I would argue that Duck Amuck might be the greatest of them all. Without question, it’s my personal favorite. No matter where you stand on it, Duck Amuck is one of the few lucky animated shorts to be selected for preservation by the National Film Registry and it’s for good reason. Along with the trademark humor of our star, the surreal premise, the breaking of the fourth wall, and the innovative and daring creative decisions used in molding this eventful story set itself apart from almost any short not only in the Looney Tunes catalogue, but any animated short that came out at that time. Whether it has been realized or not, the influence of Duck Amuck and what you can do with a cartoon in terms of imaginative storytelling in animation has lasted for generations, ensuring a legacy as one of the greatest cartoons ever.

Being a devoted Daffy Duck fan, I’m just glad he holds such a distinction as the star this time around instead of playing second banana like he’s made out to be compared to Bugs Bunny.

Like I’ve said before, Duck Amuck is pure art. Its concept of turning what we consider a regular cartoon and blowing it wide open to not only have the star acknowledge this is a cartoon he is acting in, but acknowledging there is a puppet master creating the environments and scenarios in which he finds himself in, is about as “looney” as you can get. It doesn’t stop there though. On top of the breaking of the fourth wall that finds Daffy not only yelling at the screen but also pleading for the madness to stop, and us enjoying every second of the chaos because we’re sadists at heart, but each succeeding illustration is just as wacky and colorful as the last. The high point is the animator turning Daffy Duck into a mismatched colored, Salvador Dalí-like, four-legged flower creature with its tail turning into a flag that holds the image of a screw and a ball (subtly acknowledging the “screwball” nature of the short). You can’t help but laugh when he talks aloud to himself like a Hollywood starlet while looking like a monster coming straight out of a kid’s imagination as he calmly states, “It isn’t as though I haven’t lived up to my contract, goodness knows. And goodness knows it isn’t as though I haven’t kept myself trim! Goodness knows I’ve done that”. The sense of unpredictability, the internalized feeling of terror, and the “anything can happen” aura surrounding Daffy add a whole new dimension to the rapid pace of the action. Straying away completely from the formula of what you’d expect from a Looney Tunes short, they just rip the regular script to shreds and go with a premise of “Let’s torture Daffy Duck to the brink of insanity”. With this focus in mind, we as the viewer start to feel the anxiousness and damn near hopelessness for the protagonist, despite how entertained we are.

Even if you aren’t claustrophobic, anyone paying attention to Duck Amuck can feel the heightened sense of panic Daffy feels in the scene where the black background droops and caves in on him and he can’t hold it up any longer, prompting him to freak the fuck out as he tears everything to shreds to escape while eventually catching his breath to calm down. When he asks for the closeup on the volcanic island and the camera goes right into his bloodshot, the fury translates directly to the viewer. At the same time, the shot kind of makes you jump. Along with flawlessly showcasing Daffy’s mental state in the moment, it’s done so emphatically and in a hurry that you find yourself leaning back out of uneasiness. The anxiety and all the different emotions are perfectly encapsulated by Mel Blanc, who neatly captures the essence of the mad duck within this chaotic and confusing atmosphere in exactly the way it should be conveyed.

Daffy doesn’t lose his signature anger either. Though modern Daffy Duck is hilarious because of how stupid they made him, this era of Daffy Duck will always be my favorite, as it was the closest he ever was to being considered on par with Bugs Bunny from an intellectual standpoint. His character flaw was that he could never rid himself of some of his villainous tendencies like greed, hatred, jealousy, and his extremely short temper. Duck Amuck is a great example of this Daffy outside of the team-up shorts he had with Bugs. Though one great example is when the basic outline of a city is drawn poorly after Daffy asks for scenery and Daffy shouts “How about some color stupid!” before being painted all over his body, the outright best example has to be when the screen is split into two reels, which creates two Daffys as a result. Just because of one being “down there” and the other being “up here”, one chokes the other, so the other slaps the hand off and threatens to beat the other Daffy’s ass. He even goes for a punch before the other Daffy is erased by the animator. It’s one of the most “Daffy Duck” moments of all time. Watching Daffy concussed after parachuting with the drawn anvil and he hits it with a hammer while reciting unintelligible poetry (It’s supposed to be an excerpt from “The Village Blacksmith”, but you’d be hard pressed to actually understand him) before the anvil is repainted into a bomb that he hits and it explodes was another all-time moment that shows the versatility of Daffy Duck too, something he has over Bugs Bunny in spades and is also something I don’t think he gets enough credit for.

With Bugs, you know how he’s going to react to the situation and how the story is going to go because he’s legitimately unstoppable and cannot be fucked with for some reason. With Duck Amuck being just a small sample size, Daffy goes through every emotion in the book, raises his voice to a loud screech to as low as a small squeak from far away. He goes from happily being a singing seaman or a pilot in an instant to asking for a truce so he can dance for the viewer, to stopping the cartoon from ending out of frustration, to demanding retribution and wanting to go to war with the animator himself. The layers and adaptability Daffy Duck has, especially in what I consider was his prime, is more versatile than any other Looney Tunes character in the franchise including Bugs Bunny. For the record, Bugs is still the flag bearer and the best, but Daffy is much closer to Bugs than people give him credit for. That’s why I’m here, to remind people. I’ll even argue that Duck Amuck is better than any Bugs Bunny-led cartoon, though I will concede that this is a much more controversial take that rightfully yields a debate.

It might be because I’ve watched it so many times, but this short is very quotable too. To this day, I quote farmer Daffy singing as he walks into the winter landscape, “And on this farm, he had an igloo. E-I-E-I-OOO” or him screaming “I have never been so humiliated in all my life!”. Lastly, the ending was an absolute chef’s kiss. I can’t deny that.

There have been a million Looney Tunes shorts, shows, films, and whatever else over the years, and many have been lost in the shuffle because of the sheer volume of them. On the other hand, there are a handful that any cartoon lover or future great of the industry have to watch before they even think about starting their own legacy. For these viewers, Duck Amuck is without a doubt ESSENTIAL viewing.