Big Game Haunt

Looks like that Halloween is coming up very soon. I've managed in the upcoming weeks to reviewing and critiquing "The Monkey's Paw", which it is another Spooky themed Brandy & Mr. Whiskers cartoon on where the holiday name is NOT attached there. Another post is concerning the 40th anniversary of the release of perhaps, the most greatest packaging of Post-48s Warner Bros. cartoons in Home Video... on the analog era.

But first, here's a cartoon from the very dreary, late Seven-Arts/Hendricks era of WB shorts: Alex Lovy's second Cool Cat cartoon name Big Game Haunt.

When the characters names featuring in the title-card presentation is much appealing than the actual short, it's never so a good thing.

When Warner Bros. re-opened its In-House animated studio back in 1967, little known whom are going to be in charge of the production of the newer outings. The Daffy/Speedy edict were going to an end, and a much-needed demand for newer characters at potential stars discerning them: There was first, Merlin the Magic Mouse, another impression of old actor W.C. Fields who gains his destiny to magic even for fight against his own adversaries, which he's always pairing with his assistant, Second Banana. (I know, clever name!) 

This series of shorts only lasted five cartoons while Cool Cat gotten six in the total. (The tiger character is been widespread by his many cameos on The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries and a current episode of Tiny Toons Looniversity don't involved about him, but HIS son! Is Cool Cat actually having a family?) There was a very murky attempt to spoofed the Bonnie and Clyde gangsters-movie-genre to a pair of carrot patches rabbits named, Bunny and Claude. One pointless wartime one-shot named Flying Circus didn't saying anything and evidently, the most intriguing of all them was a Bill Cosby Independent production named The Door, which revolve at a Anti-war experimental short, and by be obscured due to this message, this is the more personal effort of that era along with 1968s Norman Normal.

But Big Game Haunt is just generic and ill-fitting for make Cool Cat, Colonel Rimfire and the reason why its made, a friendly ghost named Spooky, at eventual stars. Gags, sound-effects, the sluggish Larry Storch vocal efforts, animation and even ideas are at the mercy of a skeleton budget crew that given maybe to the audience a bigger lump in the stomach than the Depatie-Freleng shorts of few years before.

You are maybe a Cool Cat per se, but you are NOT The Pink Panther!

A chase started between Cool Cat and the hunter that went end until an abandonned house is there the red with black-stripes tiger find the perfect place to hide from him. The story comes from Cal Howard. Alex Lovy's direction in these cartoons is on its biggest disservice, by have directed such better outings from Columbia and Lantz among them. Is he simply forgotten that gags that were funny or original over two-three decades old may be tiring where the animated theatrical shorts factory were at its long demise?

The only noteworthy says about this is Spooky. Period. In this, it's somehow a copyact of Casper, the Friendly Ghost that were a novel story by 1939, but more renowned at a cartoon character from Paramount's Famous by 1945 and be a template for Harvey products since. Seeing a ghost wearing a top hat in his head seems a little antiquated for 1968s standards, but it's still more refreshing than the way Cool Cat is dress like another bland early-1960s Beatnik, when the Hippies revolution became mostly a mirrored face to what that really are. And where most today's "Hippies" like better to smoked cannabis and be drunk than the ones who preached to stop wars and violence over a mid-century ago.

But like that was mostly the case in Warner shorts from this period, the rest of the cartoon is hacked by characters chasing and run back-and-forth without any context. It is all the more amazing that this is perhaps the most likable short from that era. But like Greg Method from his own Cool Cat Video Guide Page have says, it's micro-managed from bad poses. Spooky is more using at a plot device to make scare the others two and the gamut of well-worn gags are wasted there on a very monotonous cartoon, much typical to what the Bill Hendricks series of shorts will became.

Easily the only time where the three share the same scene, but that don't saying anything.

Twenty-three/four years later, another attempt was made in purpose for relegated a ghost in need of friend with the Ren & Stimpy segment called "Haunted House", by taking the Spooky character, but much depressingly unfunny, with the obvious cruel gags and utter obliviouseness of the leads. Casper having a long legacy to empowered friendship and established differences to children and this is why families adore him. There is any impact there.

A kind of gag that Tex Avery has perfectly mastered on MGM, but is been watered down by the time animation is being more and more limited, stylized and streamlined.

The short end where Cool Cat left the abandonned house by ran way fast to Spooky while the latter followed him, but there is barely any original idea to left for anyone whom have watched the Warner Bros. shorts or any of their rivals in decades. This is 1968 after all. Hanna-Barbera was at its last legs of creativity with the last ambitious production that ever came to the studio, Wacky Races (Just get away of that 2017s awful reboot!) before to churned out to anything, but Meddling Kids and a Great Dane named Scooby-Doo!.

While not at very succesful and very limited compared to the Warner Bros. cartoons released one-two decades before, Big Game Haunt was clearly an indication that Cool Cat has any chances to becoming the next new Warner star. But without Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety or the Road Runner's involvement or Daffy Duck on a temporary rest, there is no such issues there. The inclusion of Spooky is frankly, more suited on the abandonned house concept than where Disney picked up The Ghost and Molly McGee by make fun of the autism syndrome on a very dominator way and with a rather grouchy and appaling ghost design with such dreadful face name Scratch (Another bad Disney's Spum¢o clone that meant that the conglomerate never have learning their lessons from these ugly Paul Ruddish Mickey Mouse series of shorts.). 

Hard to justify that the concept of a friend-in-need ghost would never work anymore in this age, unless that is to stick forever with Casper.