The Great Piggy Bank Robbery | |
---|---|
Directed by | Robert Clampett |
Story by | Warren Foster |
Starring | Mel Blanc |
Music by | Carl W. Stalling |
Animation by | Rod Scribner Manny Gould C. Melendez I. Ellis |
Layouts by | Thomas McKimson |
Backgrounds by | Philip DeGuard |
Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. The Vitaphone Corporation |
Release date |
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Running time | 7:35 |
Language | English |
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is a 1946 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon directed by Bob Clampett.[1] The cartoon was released on July 20, 1946, and stars Daffy Duck.[2] The short is Clampett's penultimate Warner cartoon, produced shortly before he left the studio.
On a farm, Daffy Duck eagerly awaits his new Dick Tracy comic book, rushing to read it as soon as it arrives. Knocking himself out while imagining himself as "Duck Twacy," he embarks on a comical detective adventure. Mistaking ordinary objects for criminals, like a mousehole for the hideout of "Mouse Man," Daffy finds himself pursued by a colorful array of villains, including Snake Eyes, 88 Teeth, Neon Noodle, and Rubberhead.
In a chaotic showdown, Daffy manages to outwit the villains with slapstick tactics, including turning Neon Noodle into a neon sign. Finally, he recovers the stolen piggy banks, including his own, and wakes up on the farm, unwittingly kissing a real pig. Recoiling in horror, Daffy flees, leaving the enamored pig declaring her love for him in amusement.
Animation historian Steve Schneider writes, "Banners and bouquets to the great Bob C. for this still-astonishing melange of ultra-silliness and film noir. He creates a realm where stylizations feed into the fugue states so beloved of the director, where animation's capacity for compressing and distending space and time (and bodies!) is stunningly realized, where terror and hilarity are shown to be natural bedmates, and where the whacked-out visions come so fast and thick that the thing seems to anticipate MTV by forty years."[3]
Animation historian Steve Schneider said of this picture:
...Bob Clampett's forever priceless The Great Piggy Bank Robbery is clearly a work of the highest cinematic poetry, for prompting the film's manic hilarity are a sequence of images that remain among the most indelible in cartoon history.[5]
Animator John Kricfalusi (creator of Ren and Stimpy) called The Great Piggy Bank Robbery his favorite cartoon: "I saw this thing and it completely changed my life, I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen, and I still think it is."[6]
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery was the first of several cartoons in which Daffy Duck would do a parody of a well-known character, but the only one in which he was actually competent. In other take-offs, such as The Scarlet Pumpernickel, he was somewhat buffoonish, though still able to intimidate the villains. But, in later stories such as Stuporduck, Boston Quackie, Robin Hood Daffy and Deduce, You Say? (in which he played "Doorlock Holmes"), Daffy was hopelessly outmatched.
In 1994, it was voted No. 16 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.[5]