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Episode 62
Scare Happy Slappy
While the cartoon is more about the gags than the holiday, there’s still plenty of Halloween atmosphere all throughout. The opening scene of kids trick-or-treating, the Warners arriving with a short lively song number, and Skippy trick-or-treating as Buster Bunny from Tiny Toons help set the scene. In fact, the latter element is the catalyst for the entire cartoon when he convinces Slappy to let him get candy from the place where Slappy’s old enemies live.
At the interest of character
continuity, this cartoon is the first time since Episode 16 to feature the
likes of Walter Wolf, Sid the Squid, and Beanie Bison teaming up to beat
Slappy. Just like last time though,
they’re too dumb to just get together and combine their strengths. Thankfully, there isn’t much focus on them
which keeps the experience much funnier as the true emphasis is on the ways
Slappy and Skippy outwit them all while trick-or-treating. They approach each clobbering attempt with
complete awareness of what they’ll be dealing with, and enter with the absolute
appropriate measures. They each build up
with every character and have a nice Halloween touch with amenities of the
holiday playing a role in each scheme.
Beanie, the dumbest one, has a simple trick of having Slappy pick a hand
that will get her clobbered with a mallet, but the squirrels twist things
around and get him beaten instead. It’s
all in the name of awarding them candy corn, which to hear Skippy talk is
considered a hollow victory. Sid’s
scheme is more elaborate with dynamite stuffed into pumpkins, but are flashy
and out in the open, so Slappy and Skippy easily see this as the trap it
is. The result is a comic explosion of
pumpkins with one for each of Sid’s tentacles occurring as he gets tired of
waiting for the bang.
Finally from
Walter, there’s a whole haunted house of gags which is seen as a grand finish
for a Halloween cartoon. It goes all out
with gags for Slappy to expose. There’s
an electric rocking chair, apple bombs in an apple bob, and toxic green punch
that at here age would make a good laxative.
Walter’s biggest contribution are special walnut candies designed to
blow her up, but it makes for the most surprising gag when off screen, Slappy
puts axel grease under him. This makes
Walter slip around, drop the candies, and bring a big explosion to close the
cartoon with. With that, the cartoon
ends as a work of Slappy typically doing her usual thing when it just happens
to be Halloween.
It may not be a true
fright fest, but it’s still a good helping of cartoonish laughs enhanced by favorite
customs of the holiday.
A-
Witch One
For one thing, it’s one to really embrace the renowned musical formula. Not only does Rita sing, but it
also expands to the featured setting as well.
We open with nice theatricality to establish the conflict as villagers
pass by and greet good day to each other while the judge and his crow go out to
hunt witches all set to music. For
historical context, the conflict involves one of the most unjust occurrences in
American history, the Salem witch trials.
From what I remember from school, this cartoon provides a light-hearted
look at how unjust the conditions were to be declared a witch. The judge just goes around, points out a tiny
thing like someone using a broom, and immediately condemns them for taking part
in witchcraft. For some reason that’s
a reason for more of a witch than an obvious witch character like classic Warner Bros cartoon character
Witch Hazel just standing nearby. Then again,
the unjust practices are just as in line with the history books and fictional
stories I’ve read on the subject.
The interesting guidelines for the plot established, Rita and Runt enter
the cartoon to get tangled up in the judge’s mad witchcraft spree. It’s during their introduction that brings
out the sole disappointment with this cartoon being their final starring
role. While Rita goes through Salem to
hunt for food, there’s an effective duet where she and the judge sing about the
perks of being a cat. There’s Rita
showing pride in herself while the judge sees it as another reason to hunt a
witch since cats are commonly associated with witches. They meet up with each other, and Rita is
immediately captured. From there, Rita
acts as a damsel in distress and needs to be rescued despite proving on
occasions that she is capable of defending herself.
Unlike other instances of
this, Runt isn’t clueless or oblivious to Rita being in trouble and tries to
save her. He ends up caught in a
stockade at first, but his efforts are undeniable. Plus, it makes for a creative occurrence
where he meets a monotone horse, completely uninterested in what’s going on, and
keeps calling Runt Wilbur ala Mr. Ed. Still, in his unmoved mannerisms, he ends up
getting Runt out of the stockade.
After
this is another tie to the denseness of the Salem witch trials. Rita is put
into a witch test of being dumped in frozen water she obviously won’t
survive. Through bumbling maneuvering by
Runt, Rita is saved while the judge is thrown in. While he survives albeit
frozen, he gets a taste of his own practices by being called a witch
himself.
Rita’s final song highlighting
her experience is more moving than usual.
Maybe it’s the sweeping music parodying a certain famous animated
musical Runt thinks they’ll get sued for.
To me, it’s really moving when you consider what this means for the
characters. After many unique musical
works from a dramatic cat and dumb dog, they’re pretty much over, and Rita and
Runt will now be relegated to cameos.
Only in the 1999 feature film Wakko’s
Wish will they have a lot of focus once again. At least they have a good legacy ending with
this well constructed cartoon of interesting premises, passionate music, and
many great moments from the featured characters.
A
Macbeth
Being of the famous witch scene
from Macbeth, we have Dot take part
in the scene with Slappy Squirrel and Hello Nurse while Yakko translates for a
change. The actual lines are basically
magic talk as the witches cast spells while stirring a cauldron brew. In that case, with legit magic involved,
there’s no need for actual meaning to what’s said or even translation. With magic, anything goes, and the direction
doesn’t have to latch onto any specific meaning. As a result, the translation doesn’t have the
same clever construction as those with a definitive meaning. That said, through reading the actual dialog,
I can tell that a few lines are left out.
At least, as nonsensical as lines are set up to be, the translations
still have a cleverness to them. The
whole “double, double, toil and trouble” phrase amounts to a basic
“abracadabra” or “bibbidi bobbidi boo” all intentionally unenthused coming from
Yakko. The magic phrases allow
themselves to take themselves literally like fillet of a snake translated as
cooking a snake which is another name for Yakko’s agent. The line “root of hemlock” is seen as a cheer
for a team called Hemlock while “digg’d in the dark” is a cue for rapping. Other lines that mention things like a frog,
bat, dog, dragon, wolf, or shark are accompanied by Wakko taking a literal
meaning by throwing it in a cauldron. As
for the translation, Yakko alludes the lines to modern day nonsense like calling
all the ingredients camp food, or that they’re what hotdogs are made of.
The payoff to all this presents something
wicked or scary in the eyes of much of the show’s cast. Out of the cauldron, the thing that was being
brewed in the cauldron turns out to be Mr. Director singing loudly who then
gets knocked out. Of course, that’s out
of context to the real play, but it does give closure to the whole sketch
without the audience needing to expect anything more.
This is a strong cartoon if you’re in the mood
for laughs from nonsense, even if the show has pulled off more impressive works
when turning to Shakespeare. It’s not
the best end to a set of segments, but it’s as funny as ever when looking at it
from the show’s usual standards.
A-
Cartoon Ranking
1. Baloney and Kids
2. Ragamuffins
3. Frontier Slappy
4. Woodstock Slappy
5. Wakko’s Gizmo
6. The Warners and the Beanstalk
7. Brain Meets Brawn
8. Meet John Brain
9. Yes, Always
10. Drive Insane
11. Karaoke Dokie
12. Witch One
13. Of Course, You Know This Means Warners
14. Meet Minerva
15. The Chicken Who Loved Me
16. Scare Happy Slappy
17. Smell Ya Later
18. A Gift of Gold
19. Ups and Downs
20. The Helpinki Formula
21. Les Boutons et le Ballon
22. Gold Rush
23. Up a Tree
24. Cranial Crusader
25. Katie Ka-Boom: The Driving Lesson
26. Kung Boo
27. The Brave Little Trailer
28. Girlfeathers
29. Super Buttons
Song Ranking
1. Schnitzelbank
2. I’m Cute
3. Dot’s Quiet Time
Miscellaneous Ranking
1. Branimaniacs
2. Macbeth
3. Oh, Oh, Ethel
4. Spike
The next Animaniacs review consists of material from lower tier characters where the Goodfeathers look after an egg, Mindy and Buttons are mermaids, and Katie Ka-Boom starts getting really ugly in a cartoon about her missing a call.
Next time on MC Toon Reviews is "Jungle Moon" from Steven Universe.
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