Enjoy this bounty of scary, spooky Halloweeny Looney Tunes comic book covers...
Where the All-Father passes judgement on those that traverse the Bifrost.
Showing posts with label Looney Tunes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Looney Tunes. Show all posts
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
MONSTER-MONTH: COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN (Day 8)
Welcome to the eighth night of Monster-Month, a feature for the Countdown to Halloween, which we will be continuing all month long here at THE GOODS!
Tonight we shine the spotlight on “Frankie” of The Groovie Goolies. Frankie is a Frankenstein Monster who is easygoing and soft-spoken, a laid-back percussionist and head of the Muscle-leum Gymnasium. And, like all of the other Goolies, a cousin of Sabrina, a teenage witch.
Frankie was voiced by Howard Morris doing his best Boris Karloff impersonation.
Frankie had an alter-ego, who was an ineffective superhero by the name of Super Gool--quite a spiffy look for a Frankenstein hero.
The Groovie Goolies are a hip group of monsters, who make good pop-culture reference to the classic monsters created for horror movies in the 1930s and ‘40s.
GROOVIE GOOLIES was a spinoff of SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH (which, itself was a spinoff of THE ARCHIE SHOW) and ran from 1970 through 1972 on CBS. Filmation produced the formulaic show. Like many cartoons from this era, the series lead characters were in a band and would often perform songs a few times each episode.
The Goolies all live at Horrible Hall, a haunted boarding house for monsters. Horrible Hall sits on Horrible Drive. The other two main Goolies were Drac, a short-tempered vampire who was head of Horrible Hall and Wolfie, a hippie werewolf who was always up for fun, which usually meant running around, surfing, or driving the Wolfwagon. “Weirdo Wolfie” often annoyed “Dangerous Drac” with his antics.
Other characters in the series are Hagatha, a plump witch who is the Hall’s cook; Bella La Ghostly, a Vampiress phone operator; Dr. Jekyll and Hyde, the resident physician; Mummy, announcer of “The Mummy’s Wrap-Up” newscasts; Boneapart, a skeleton in a Napoleon hat who would often go to pieces; Ghoulihand, a giant, disembodied glove; Batso and Ratzo, two fanged brats who often planned pranks that often backfired; Hauntleroy, a portly, naughty and selfish sissy in a sailer suit and cousin to Hagatha; Icky and Goo, two gargoyle-like creatures that act as pets for the Hall; Tiny a small, long-haired mummy with a high-piched voice who was a parody of the popular Tiny Tim and cousin of the Mummy; Missy, Tiny’s wife who was a waifish ghost.
The format of the show was similar to LAUGH-IN which was popular at the time. A sketch comedy show with riddles and joke segments.
Every episode also featured two musical segments, one featuring the Goolies and the other focusing on one of the other resident bands and they were:
The Mummies and the Puppies (a parody of The Mamas and the Papas)
The Spirits of ’76 (a ghost trio of colonial soldiers)
The Rolling Gravestones (riffing on The Rolling Stones) who are visually moving headstones… hudson Rock, Captain Marble and General Granite.
And the Bare Boned Band, a trio of skeletons.
FIVE FRANKENSTEIN FUN FACTS:
1) Howard Morris, who voiced Frankie, also did the voice for Wolfie and many of the "extra" Goolies.
2) In a groundbreaking move, Filmation's Grovie Goolies crossed over with Warner Bros. Looney Tunes for an ABC Saturday Superstar Movie entitled "Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet The Groovie Goolies"--the one and only time WB had loaned out their characters.
3) Often, Frankie would get zapped by lightning, which showed his inner workings and after which he would simply say "I needed that!".
4) Frankie had a pet dinosaur named Rover.
5) The show's theme song "Goolie Get-Together" was covered by The Toadies for the 1995 tribute "Saturday Morning: Cartoon's Greatest Hits"
Useful links into the world of Filmation's Groovie Goolies:
And lest we forget
Little Lord Hauntleroy:
Friday, December 23, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
LOONEY TUNES' MARC ANTONY AND PUSSYFOOT
Sketch of, probably, the first work of fiction to make me tear up (I was all of 6 or so) as I felt so bad for poor Marc Antony for thinking his newfound friend Pussyfoot (or Cleo) had been baked into the cookies his owner had made. Easily one of my favorite all-time shorts. It can be found, well, here:
Saturday, October 16, 2010
COUNTDOWN to HALLOWEEN Day 16: A SPRINKLE OF HAZEL AND GOSSAMER
Certainly we all remember the annual viewing of IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN, and it is a fun little imaginative feature for all ages, but does anyone remember the Bugs Bunny Halloween Special that used to air on nearly the same kind of annual basis? Is it just me or was the yearly combination of those classic Looney Tunes a lot more exciting to watch? Now don't think that I'm dissing the Great Pumpkin, because he is a great religion (blessings and peace be upon the sincere patch he chooses to arise from this year) and always a hoot to watch, but for a kid of my youth the pacing of the Charlie Brown specials seemed to be in s-l-o-w--m-o-t-i-o-n. The work of the Looney Tunes gang could never be classified as slowly paced. Manic, sure, tortoise-like, nope!
Warner Bros. studios certainly weren't very original in naming their witch Hazel, but they did a great job of making her a character of note. One of surely evil intent, but with quite a few relatable traits as well. She was big, ugly, green and moly with a touch of modesty and a bucket full of sass. She was a fun match for Bugs.
Gossamer, who was usually seen as a henchman of a mad scientist, did not have a name when he first appeared. In his second appearance he was called Rudolph. He finally got the name Gossamer, in DUCK DODGERS AND THE RETURN OF THE 24TH1/2 CENTURY decades after his first appearance in 1946. Gossamer, like many of the guys chasing our animated heroes, is an overpowering physical menace while being as dumb as a box of hammers and as gullible as a new born baby. And he's kind of fun that way.
Hazel usually wants to cook up our fair hare for supper or to use in a spell and chases Bugs on a broomstick which has an attitude all it's own. Her wall mirror seems to be the one the witch from Snow White used.
Easily one of my favorite, if not my very favorite, bits that Bugs has ever done is when he stops the monster cold when he's about to be pounced upon and starts in on him like a nail salon gal about his fingernails. From there he goes on a veritable sprint of giving the monster a manicure and a haircut--all the while talking him up like a long lost girlfriend from high school.
"A Witch's Tangled Hare" features many Shakespearean references (even has the dude running around and taking notes).
"Duck Dodgers..." lets us know, finally, what Gossamer is hiding underneath all that hair!
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For more on Hazel and Gossamer:
Monsterama
GoldenAgeCartoons
CaffeinatedJoe
And now a look at another nifty greeting card to give meaning to the season:
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