Anyone who grew up watching Looney Tunes or other classic animated shorts of the like are familiar with the name Tex Avery. Frederick “Tex” Avery had a hand in creating some of animation’s most iconic characters including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Droopy Dog, Screwy Squirrel and many, many more. While Tex had a major impact while working on Looney Tunes, it was when he moved to MGM that his creativity really flourished and helped sculpt animation as we know it today. Tex Avery Screwball Classics: Volume 1 presents 19 shorts from 1943-1951 during this time at MGM featuring some Tex Avery Classics along with a collection of shorts starring Screwy Squirrel, George and Junior and Droopy Dog.
The first nine shorts as presented on the disc come from the Tex Avery Classics grouping which features a diverse array of stories that captures the zaniness of Tex. When viewing these shorts, it is fascinating to see how mature they are with clever wordplay, sexed-up gags, and copious amounts of smoking that leaves little credence to any idea that entertainment used to be more quaint. These shorts provide many laugh out loud moments that should play well with a modern audience that grew up on the frantic energy of Animaniacs or Ren & Stimpy. Standouts among this group include an updated look at a classic fairy tale in the form of Red Hot Riding Hood, a madcap baseball game with the best lines of the disc on Batty Baseball, and an offbeat whodunit with Who Killed Who? that plays with the format in fun ways.
Next we move on to four shorts featuring Screwy Squirrel, including his first appearance in Screwball Squirrel. These shorts are a lot of fun, but for maximum enjoyment the viewer may want to skip the play all feature and perhaps mix and match between different collections to avoid burnout on one particular character. None of these shorts hold back on the over the top violence that might not seem too dissimilar from a scene in an episode of The Itchy & Scratchy Show, and Screwy Squirrel is perhaps the epitome of this. After this we get two shorts featuring George and Junior, two characters that take on an Of Mice and Men relationship dynamic. The best of these shorts is Red Hot Rangers in which they battle an anthropomorphized flame to prevent a forest fire.
The final four shorts feature the most recognizable character of the disc, Droopy Dog. Dumb Hounded serves as an introduction to this charmingly simple dog that takes his time but always manages to capture the criminal who is trying to make a jailbreak. The remaining three shorts sees Droopy in competition with Spike the Bulldog, a dog that cannot seem to fathom how this hound continually bests him. There are a lot of fun visual gags throughout these shorts and Droopy’s monotone delivery makes for some great comedic moments.
It should be noted that this disc opens up with a warning that some of these cartoons contain ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. Warner wisely decided that rather than lock these cartoons away and pretend like these prejudices never existed, they are presenting them as they were originally created. Hopefully this will lead to positive discussions on how the culture has shifted for the better while still enjoying the more problematic shorts as a product of their time.
Video Quality
Warner Archive pulls off a near-miracle when it comes to how fantastic these shorts look on Blu-Ray. Unfortunately, the MGM Tex Avery shorts had their original nitrate negatives destroyed in a fire, but Warner Archive has once again saved the day for animation fans as they have collected the best surviving elements and given them a new 4K scan. Simply put, these shorts have never looked better on a home entertainment platform. While there is more noticeable film grain in some shorts more than others, this is easily forgivable given the elements they had available. Compare the four Droopy shorts to the same shorts on the Tex Avery’s Droopy – The Complete Theatrical Collection that Warner released on DVD in 2007 and you instantly notice a night and day difference. The DVD versions had an ugly, muted color with noticeable print damage throughout, but this new Blu-Ray collection provides a presentation so stunning it looks like some of these could have been made in the present day.
Audio Quality
As with the Video presentation, the DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio track makes these shorts sound better than they ever have. The track handles dialogue, sudden sound effects and a background score with a wonderful finesse, keeping all of the different elements clear and not overpowering one another. There are no noticeable hiccups with this presentation. Optional English (SDH) subtitles are included during all 19 shorts.
Special Features
This one disc release does not contain any additional special features, but the quality of the main content of this disc is astounding and more than makes up for this.
Final Thoughts
Warner Archive has delivered an essential presentation into classic animation that should be cherished by any fan of the medium. As this is labeled as Volume 1, one would hope that Volume 2 is not too far behind later this year. These 19 shorts provide genuine belly laughs with an Audio and Video presentation that is nothing short of awe inspiring. Highly Recommended
Tex Avery Screwball Classics: Volume 1 can be purchased directly through Warner Archives or various other online retailers.
Note: Images presented in this review are not reflective of the image quality of the Blu-Ray.
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.
