Porky's Duck Hunt (House of End Cards)

 

Director: Tex Avery (credited as “Fred Avery”)

Summary: Inspired by reading a book, Porky decides to go duck-hunting…and encounters a crazy duck (daffy, if you will) that proves hard to take down. Oh, and there’s a strange interlude involving drunken fish singing Moonlight Bay.

The Channel(s): Various, mostly unnamed syndication and international versions, though Nickelodeon did air a redrawn version that had the cut described below.

Part(s) Edited: After the cartoon ends with Porky getting punched in the face by his upstairs neighbor who got shot in the ass for the second time, the original end card had “That’s All Folks!” already written out while Daffy jumps, bounces, and dances around the letters. Sunset Productions back in 1955 cut that because Warner Bros. initially didn’t want to be associated with television. Most redrawn versions (particularly the Nickelodeon version that aired when Looney Tunes on Nickelodeon was a daytime show and all of their black and white shorts -- just the Porky ones, as the Bosko and Buddy shorts were phased out -- had to be colorized) also have this edit, but their versions either replace the end card with the “That’s All Folks!” concentric circle card or the abstract WB end card from the post-1964 cartoons. Nickelodeon definitely did the latter, while the former was seen more on international cuts, specifically on an Italian VHS version of Bugs Bunny’s 50th Birthday Collection.

What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: Not much, though, if I had to pick, just the fact that it’s considered a censorship cut. Censorship cuts are the ones that remove content that’s considered harmful or offensive by polite, corporate society (violence, sex, drug abuse, actions that can easily be imitated by impressionable viewers, anything that fans the flames of racial, ethnic, sexual, or gender-specific hate, whether it’s serious or in jest; anything that could cause undue distress to sensitive viewers, anything advocating antisocial or self-destructive behavior, etc). There’s nothing objectionable about this, except for the fact that Warner Bros once objected to being associated with television, and the fact that it’s included as a censorship cut on the old Censored Cartoons Page, the Looney Tunes Fandom Wiki, and this very blog is a worrying sign that people don’t know what words mean. I’m only including it here to show you just how ridiculous it is. Is it really censorship if the scene itself is innocuous? The answer is, “No. Then it’s just a cut for time or for some kind of legal issue involving copyright, in which case, it’s a syndication cut.”

And if you’re playing at home, no, Porky shooting his upstairs neighbor in the butt twice wasn’t cut, nor was the sequence with the drunken fish, not even on channels that have a history of editing irresponsible gunplay and/or drunken behavior (so…Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and maybe Nickelodeon, but I can see Nickelodeon only editing the gun parts).

It should also be of note that some redrawn versions (and the computer-colorized version that I'm so sure aired on Cartoon Network and Boomerang outside of Late Night Black and White) do exist with the original end card, but cut the part where a cross-eyed hunter and his equally crossed shotgun shoots down two planes while aiming for a duck and the end where Porky stutters that he has no more bullets in his rifle. It's from a Brazilian channel called SBT.

How It Plays Edited/Video Comparison: Since the audio hasn’t been altered (just the video), it does come off as weird, but it’s not anything to freak out over…unless you’re a purist who advocates for uncut and uncensored entertainment (which I can get behind). As for the edits done on SBT...cutting the cross-eyed hunter part doesn’t make or break the short, but it does look obvious because a fake fade-out was used (and I've seen enough edited Warner Bros. cartoons on TV in the 1990s and early 2000s to know that a fake fade-out to the next scene usually means something was cut). The end with Porky stuttering that he doesn’t have any more bullets...yeah, audio edits are hit or miss (with more misses than hits, though the misses usually become hits due to how laughably bad they are. If you’re like me, you remember when most edited-for-TV movies hired replacement voice actors to bowdlerize lines that had swearing, crude, sexually suggestive comments; or were just generally offensive for one reason or another. Most of those lines have become memes. These days, you can easily mute the line, cut or shorten the scene with the offending line, use an alternate take that was done while the film was being produced, or use A.I. dubbing, the last of which is still in its experimental phase, but, give it time, and it will catch on) and this one was a miss.

As always, here’s the video:

Availability Uncut: It was shown uncut on the “Daffy Duck: The Nuttiness Continues” 24 Karat Golden Jubilee VHS and Beta collection back in 1985, though that version had “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” dubbed over the original opening theme and was time-compressed. The actual version where all parts are intact, it’s in black and white, it’s not sped up, and the original music is on the track can be found on either the Essential Daffy Duck DVD (disc one) or the Porky Pig 101 DVD (disc 2), and will be included in the upcoming Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault Blu-ray. It was on Max/HBO Max, but, for reasons unknown, all of the classic Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts have been removed. Here’s hoping it’s only temporary.

‘Til next time…

Thought I’d do something different, since this is the first cartoon that pairs Porky and Daffy, the first time Daffy is shown as actually living up to his name, and the first time Mel Blanc voices Porky, since Joe Dougherty was let go due to not being able to control his actual stutter during recording.