Cartoon Classics-Volume 2

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General		Extras
Category	Animation	None
Rating
Year Of Production	?
Running Time	72:15
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Chuck Jones Robert McKimson
Studio Distributor	Flashback Home Entertainment	Starring	Mel Blanc
Case	C-Button-Version 2
RPI	$9.95	Music	Carl W. Stalling

    This is the second volume of a series of cheaply made DVDs of cartoons from the 1940s. If you are wondering why these come from the 1940s, the reason is that they are out of copyright, and so can be published by anyone without the need to pay royalties to the original creators. This is not a secret - it's printed in at least 9 point text on the back cover of this title. So, providing it doesn't bother you that the people who spent hours drawing, animating, and voicing these cartoons aren't being paid, you can buy this with a clear conscience...

    You can find my review of the first volume in this series here. This volume isn't quite as historic as the first, but still contains some early instances of characters we still see today, including Foghorn Leghorn (and his chicken hawk pursuer) and the baby kangaroo (whose only name I've heard is "Junior"). There are fully developed versions of Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, and Porky Pig. And there are several other characters who may have vanished without a trace, save for archival efforts like these.

    We get exactly the same menu as last time, and the same extras (do you know the tune to I got plenty of nuthin'?). Basically, it's just ten cartoon shorts run together, each starting with the Merrie Melodies intro, and closing with "That's All Folks!". Interestingly, these cartoons include two which have characters modelled on famous actors (not that this is acknowledged...).

    The cartoons are:

• Birth of a Notion - a mad scientist who looks and sounds like Peter Lorre needs a duck wishbone to complete his experiment. All the ducks have flown south for winter, except Daffy...
• The Little Lion Hunter - a somewhat racist depiction of a little African hunter. What's a skunk (North American) doing in Africa? And what is that bird? A toucan (South American)? A cassowary (Australian)?
• Lost and Foundling - a mouse adopts an egg, and the bird that hatches from it
• A Tale of Two Mice - a pair of mice who look an awful lot like Abbott and Costello (no, not the Australian politicians!) up against an unnamed cat
• Behind the Meat-Ball - a dog being fed vegetables, who dreams of meat, is tempted beyond his limits by a stray steak
• Goodnight Elmer - the adventures of Elmer Fudd and the errant candle (funnier than it sounds!)
• A Pest in the House - Daffy Duck as the worst bell-boy in all of history
• Trap Happy Porky - is a cat brought in to get rid of mice more trouble than the mice were?
• Hop, Look and Listen - an early version of the "baby kangaroo confused for a mouse" plot
• Crowing Pains - Foghorn Leghorn and the little chicken hawk, plus a dog and a cat (who looks like Sylvester)- a bit more involved than usual

    There's really only one politically incorrect cartoon in this bunch, that being the second one. These cartoons do have a certain historic value, but there may be better sources for them - these look like they've been sourced from multi-generation video tape, and are pretty lousy quality.

    The back cover looks like it was put together rather hurriedly - the credits under The Little Lion Hunter are repeated under Lost and Foundling and A Tale of Two Mice - this is definitely wrong.

Video

    This disc has been prepared at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, not 16x9 enhanced. This is likely to be accurate, but is most likely because the master for this material was probably videotape (very old, heavily used videotape). The video quality on this disc is more consistent than on the first volume, but that's not necessarily a good thing (it's more a case of consistently bad...)

    The image is slightly better than on the first volume - a touch sharper, but only a touch. There is constant low-level noise. A few scenes, most notably around 35:16 and 67:32, have the brightness turned up so high that virtually no detail can be seen - everything is a blur of hot white - horrible!

    Colour is present, but there's a misalignment between the luminance and chroma signals - the chroma signal is always ahead of the luma, meaning that the colour changes before the brightness - it manifests itself as coloured fringes on the left edges of everything. It's ugly, and annoying, and constant throughout the disc, although the size of the error varies a little. To add insult to injury, there's some colour bleed as well, but this only happens occasionally.

    There are plenty of film artefacts, but they are negligible compared with the others - the smears on the film at 20:43, for example, are hardly worth mentioning.

    There is some aliasing, but less than you might expect, because the image is so soft. There's no moire. There are interlacing artefacts, probably introduced in the copying of the video tape, but possibly in conversion from NTSC to PAL.

    There are no subtitles.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered. There's no need for a second layer, and I'm glad of it - I doubt my eyes would have stood it if this disc had been too much longer.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided solely in English, in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono at 192 kbps. This is a poor quality soundtrack, with constant tape hiss (although it is far worse in Trap Happy Porky than in any other cartoon), and plenty of crackle. There's a loud noise at 25:36.

    The dialogue is clear enough.

    The score, by Carl W. Stalling, is standard Merrie Melodies stuff - loud clichéd orchestral stuff - you know what to expect.

    The only speaker which must suffer through this is your centre channel - be nice to it and play something decent afterwards, OK?

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are no extras.

    Region 1 escapes this disc, but it is not region coded, so you could send a copy to your Region 1 friends (?), provided they have the ability to display PAL.

    Mildly entertaining cartoons of mostly historic interest. Unfortunately, this DVD won't wear out the way an equivalent video would - pity.

    The video quality is absolutely dreadful. You could use it as a reference, but only for video artefacts.

    The audio quality is poor.

    There are no extras at all.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall