Category: Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner

Carnivarious vulgaris and Accelerati icredibulis. If these two appeared, they’re in this category.

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Ready, Set, Zoom!

“Detour thru tunnel”

One morning, the coyote awakes for a fresh day of Roadrunner chasing. Today’s tricks include painting a road with glue. (Look, he’s on it, but then there’s a circle around him. Did it just evaporate?) He gets hit by a truck. He tries again with the glue and a dynamite stick, but the bird just runs through it, splashing the glue on him and the TNT. BOOM!

He successfully gets the bird into a log perched off a cliff, but the bird just jumps out through a knothole. The coyote falls. He tries to drop a weight that does not fall until he’s under it and when he tries a TNT lasso, the bird takes an alternate route, and the coyote blows up. He also makes a creative device complete with wagon and boat motor.  He goes careening off a cliff, and quickly unties himself only for the machine make it to the other side, anyway. He also puts on a female roadrunner suit, and gets chased by every coyote in the desert.

Personal Rating: 3

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Stop! Look! and Hasten!

“Coyote (Eatibus Anythingus)”

365 days of this blog! One more until the first anniversary!

Food is scarce in the desert, so the coyote has to make do with flies and old cans. Then his dream lunch runs by and new ideas swarm in his head. A boulder just falls on him and a snare trap gets him a truck. A tiger trap only catches a tiger (obviously) and when he tries a steel wall that will pop out of the ground, the stupid thing gets stuck.

The chase continues onto the railroad where he gets creamed by a train, and when he decides to use a detonator, he blows himself up. (Watch the handle, it changes color.) Getting the bird to stop for some free bird seed, he tries the classic saw around prey, and whole bridge falls gag. (Good thing roadrunners can fly.)

As a last resort, he chugs down some leg vitamins and now he can catch up to the bird, but of course just as he is about to catch it, the wall from earlier pops up. The Roadrunner spells out “That’s all Folks” in his dust.

Personal Rating: 4

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Zipping Along

“Yeooooow!”

We all know the Roadrunner is fast, but did you know he can outrun a speeding train? He may just be minding his own business, but there are hungry eyes watching. This time the coyote tries to throw a grenade, but only throws the pin. He tries the old classic: mousetraps, but they just end up on him. He tries to drop a bomb from a kite, but kites were not exactly designed to carry that much weight, now were they?

Since there are no cops around he can get away with chopping a telephone pole. (It falls on him.) He learns hypnotism, but the bird has a mirror and he gets himself to walk off a cliff. He tries making a booby trapped doorway but he gets hit by a car before it can be used for its intended purpose.

Personal Rating: 3

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Going! Going! Gosh!

‘Road runner (acceleratti incrediblus)’

After the Roadrunner runs by, the coyote jumps from his hiding place to pounce…and misses. Time to use the old noggin! When launching a TNT arrow, only the bow gets fired. Using a large slingshot ends up with the coyote pinned against… err… some plant, and his cement just ends up covering himself.

He tries a grenade while under a manhole but the bird takes a different route and ends up pinning a rock on the manhole cover. BOOM! He dresses up as a female hitchhiker (the bird already has a date) and paints a fake road (only to have a real truck drive out of it.) After some more gags (including a genius hot air balloon) the coyote decides to jump and harpoon the bird. However he gets hit by another truck. This one driven by the bird himself.

Personal Rating: 3

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Beep Beep

“Last water for 300 miles”

After the title cards, the coyote notes that his prey is just too dang fast, and he will not be able to catch it on foot. This calls for stradegy. He rigs a boxing glove up to a boulder, but when he releases it, the boulder crashes into him. (So does the glove.) He tries dropping an anvil on the bird from a tightrope but the weight drags him down. (If you’re watching “Space Jam” this is where the short would end) He is not worried because he has a parachute…or not.

He tries a clever booby trapped glass of water, which the bird ignores and a chase through the mines ensures. (This breaks one of Chuck’s rules: “The Roadrunner must stay on the road”) The coyote later tries some rocket skates but he can’t control them. Battered and bruised he tries to get a drink, only to be blown up by his device. As a last resort he makes a fake railroad but gets clobbered by a real train. Need I say who is riding in it?

Personal Rating: 4

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The Bugs Bunny Show

“On with the show, this is it!”

During the sixties, “Looney Tunes” was on its last legs. Also during this time, Looney Tunes got its TV show. (Why not? It was the latest fad!) The premise was simple: Bugs showing us cartoons with various bridging sequences in between, such as Bugs feeding Taz carrots or Slowpoke coming to visit Speedy. The show was black and white which may have been odd today since all the shorts in the theaters were color, but color TV was only starting to get started. Lack of pigment  was a small price to pay for the convenience of watching animated masterpieces in your own living room.

Now for the bad news. This show is gone and you’re not liable to find any full episodes. (At least, as I’m originally writing this.) If you ever have seen, or have any somehow, you are quite lucky. Maybe you’d like to make the rest of the world feel as lucky as you?

Personal Rating: (From what little I’ve seen) 3

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Space Jam

“You guys are nuts.”

“Correction, we’re Looney Tunes”

I love this movie, but then again, I am a Looney Tunes fanboy. It’s sad most of the world seems to hate it. I think that is bull crap. This is a masterpiece if ever there was one. At least it did great at the box office.

The history is that people made commercials with Bugs and Michael Jordan advertising basketball shoes. So they figured making a movie was a good idea. (I think it was.) Our plot is that a theme park in outer space, (it is not specified which planet, but I think the whole park is its own planet) sucks. (How can people say that? Didn’t you ever want to ride an Astro-orbiter wannabe that shoots at you? Oh yeah, me neither) The owner decides they need new attractions and figures that the Looney Tunes are just the thing. I’d come.

However, Bugs tricks them into thinking they need to give the toons a chance to defend themselves. Since the aliens are short and have tiny limbs, basketball seems like a shoe in. However the aliens have the ability to steal the ability from five NBA players. Luckily, Jordan was retired at this time. So they don’t nab him. The toons get him for their side and we get the greatest game in all history!

This also introduced us to Lola. She did not have much of a personality in this movie, save for being someone for Bugs to be attracted to. Seems she was popular though, as she appeared in “Baby Looney Tunes”, “Tweety’s High Flying Adventure”, and “The Looney Tunes Show.”

Bottom line if you hate this you have no taste and at the very least you have to watch it once. (There must be more who love this, I know it!) “Tune” in next time where I will name all the Looney Tunes who appear in the film as well as some interesting facts. Woo hoo hoo hoo! Woo hoo!

Personal Rating: 3. (Unless you’re one of those people who can’t stand anything Looney that came out after the Golden age. For you, it’s a 2.)

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Fast and Furry-ous

“Beep-beep!”

Chuck Jones said that every Roadrunner cartoon would consist of 11 gags that would lead to a big finish. Since every one has the same plot, I will detail them in uh… detail. Starting with the first one ever, this one. So (Spoilers ahead) if you don’t want to know how it ends, don’t read.

We start with a bunch of signs telling us the title of the short. Something zooms by ripping them out of the ground. We freeze-frame to see its a roadrunner (Acelerati incredibulis). Panning over, we see he is being watched by a predator, a coyote (Carnivorus vulgaris). He grabs some utensils and gives chase. The bird sees him and gives a burst of speed leaving the canine in the dust. Shocked at the speed, he decides to use strategy.

First he holds up a pot lid. The r.r. stops short and seeing the c., he runs off. C. throws the lid down in frustration and begins to chase, but at the last second the r.r. returns and holds the lid up. C. crashes into it. Next he throws a boomerang and immediately gets hit by one thrown by the r.r. It runs off and c begins to chase, only to get hit with the one he originally threw. A school girl disguise doesn’t fool the bird and his rocket just fires him up into a cliff. Pulling a key stone out from under a rock just causes it to fall on him and a fake tunnel keeps turning real and fake again.

He tries a detonator that just explodes in his face and tries his first Acme product (a super suit) which was probably for fun only. He tries an easy to ski snow trail, but it just causes him to fall off a cliff. Next, trying rocket shoes, he nearly catches his prey, but they short out just as he is about to reach it. He decides to take the shortcut. Hiding behind a rock he hears a ‘beep’ sound and jumps into the road and is immediately hit by a bus. However he did hear the bird…it was riding in the back seat.

Personal Rating: 4