I've blogged previously about how holiday specials were kind of a big deal back in the days before recordable media was cheap and available. With Halloween sneaking up on us, we have a new Halloween special to enjoy this year... and by new, I mean old. It's 1978's Bugs Bunny's Howl-oWeen Special, in which some of my favorite spooky-themed Looney Tunes and Merrie Melody shorts (among them Bugs Bunny's encounters with a vampire and a cauldron-stirring witch, Porky Pig and Sylvester's spooky stay in a mice-infested hotel, and Tweety Bird's transformation into a monster via a mad scientist's potion), are chopped up, strung together, and wrapped around with some new animation to make it all appear to be happening across one Halloween night.
The original shorts repurposed for this special include Transylvania 6-5000 (1963), Broom-Stick Bunny (1956), Scaredy Cat (1948), Claws For Alarm (1954), and A-Haunting We Will Go (1966) (all of which have been previously released in their entirety, with opening titles and closing credits, on various Looney Tunes DVD collections.)
For some reason this release is kind of scarce to find on store shelves (I did find a copy at Toys-R-Us, and maybe it will become more readily available as we get closer to Halloween.)
Just great. The originals are always fun to watch, even if the wrap-around stuff doesn't match up or have the same quality.
ReplyDeleteOh those are so much fun and bring back great memories....likely part of the reason I do what I do. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteCheers!
This special is good to have on when doing Halloween crafts or the like.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that it's a Halloween special, I just sometimes wish they'd let some of the segments play a bit more than they do sometimes.