This short was recently shown on the syndicated television series "Toon In With Me", which shows vintage American cartoons with bits of trivia before and after.
This is a very average Daffy Duck short. Produced in 1986 for a 1987 release, the short features a then-modern Daffy design. Here he works alone as a paranormal investigator. The obscure character Melissa Duck is revived here (pun intended) as someone who calls Daffy's office to evasively complain about her home's appliances being possessed by ghosts. (She lives in an urban brownstone).
Daffy arrives, and the antics begin. Unbeknownst to Daffy, Melissa herself is possessed, randomly turning into a vampire-like ghoul. (Her visage in this form is hulking, with wildly frizzy hair and unusually pronounced bosoms).
The sight gags are just okay here: a peek into a cupboard reveals an oncoming train (with stock live action footage); a peek into the refrigerator begets flames; a glimpse into the oven reveals an Alaskan tableau (complete with an Eskimo person ice-fishing. Probably not an ethnic gag that would be done nowadays.)
Daffy is enamored by his lady client's (regular) visage, and so he tries to clumsily romance her-- spoiler alert, it doesn't go well at all. Once Melissa's inner demons stand revealed, Daffy has to go into his book of exorcism (he accidentally begins with a book on exercise). He ends up doing an impromptu stand up comedy routine to make the ghosts pop out of Melissa and render her back to normal. At the same time, the three non-scary-looking ghosts decide that they might as well go on to the next closest Toon-- Daffy-- which Daffy only finds out after reading a follow-up paragraph in his exorcism guidebook. The short ends with Daffy somehow being able to immediately expel the imps from his own body, and high-tailing it out of the house and down the street with the ghostly trio in pursuit. (No relation to Casper's ghostly trio of course).
The short is set up to be a light parody of elements of "Ghostbusters" and "The Exorcist", with arguably the former being more top of mind, since it was a major box office hit just three years beforehand. Adult viewers may catch a throwaway reference to the Sally Field mini-series/film "Sybil".
The short is understandably not very scary (because kids) but it's also, in retrospect, not that funny either. The production values are adequate for the 1980s. Some of the introductory background drawings are intriguing, but that's it. This was originally released in theaters. It is also an antecedent to the theatrical release "Daffy Duck's Quackbusters" which used previously produced Looney Tunes shorts all with monster/ghost themes with newly produced bridging sequences.
"The Duxorcist" is one of the last productions featuring voice acting legend Mel Blanc. (BJ Ward plays Melissa).
Warner Brothers hadn't been producing cartoon shorts directly for theaters for decades by the time this was released in theaters. It clearly didn't lead to a revival of the format, as theatrical-exclusive cartoons still remain a rarity as of the 21st century.
This short would be fairly low in the Looney Tunes (and Daffy-specific) canon. By the tail end of the 1960s, Warner had begun outsourcing production of the vast majority of Looney-Tunes related fare (including to Warner Studios alumni outfit Depatie-Freling). The works produced were passable enough for Saturday morning programming (already awash with shorts produced in the "golden era") but almost exclusively paled in comparison to the studio's earlier Looney Tunes works. The filmmakers of "The Duxorcist" obviously meant well, but it took the "Tiny Toons Adventures" television production to bring back a certain (safely) edgy sensibility to WB cartoons that had both an adult appeal and goofy fun for kids, too.
This is a very average Daffy Duck short. Produced in 1986 for a 1987 release, the short features a then-modern Daffy design. Here he works alone as a paranormal investigator. The obscure character Melissa Duck is revived here (pun intended) as someone who calls Daffy's office to evasively complain about her home's appliances being possessed by ghosts. (She lives in an urban brownstone).
Daffy arrives, and the antics begin. Unbeknownst to Daffy, Melissa herself is possessed, randomly turning into a vampire-like ghoul. (Her visage in this form is hulking, with wildly frizzy hair and unusually pronounced bosoms).
The sight gags are just okay here: a peek into a cupboard reveals an oncoming train (with stock live action footage); a peek into the refrigerator begets flames; a glimpse into the oven reveals an Alaskan tableau (complete with an Eskimo person ice-fishing. Probably not an ethnic gag that would be done nowadays.)
Daffy is enamored by his lady client's (regular) visage, and so he tries to clumsily romance her-- spoiler alert, it doesn't go well at all. Once Melissa's inner demons stand revealed, Daffy has to go into his book of exorcism (he accidentally begins with a book on exercise). He ends up doing an impromptu stand up comedy routine to make the ghosts pop out of Melissa and render her back to normal. At the same time, the three non-scary-looking ghosts decide that they might as well go on to the next closest Toon-- Daffy-- which Daffy only finds out after reading a follow-up paragraph in his exorcism guidebook. The short ends with Daffy somehow being able to immediately expel the imps from his own body, and high-tailing it out of the house and down the street with the ghostly trio in pursuit. (No relation to Casper's ghostly trio of course).
The short is set up to be a light parody of elements of "Ghostbusters" and "The Exorcist", with arguably the former being more top of mind, since it was a major box office hit just three years beforehand. Adult viewers may catch a throwaway reference to the Sally Field mini-series/film "Sybil".
The short is understandably not very scary (because kids) but it's also, in retrospect, not that funny either. The production values are adequate for the 1980s. Some of the introductory background drawings are intriguing, but that's it. This was originally released in theaters. It is also an antecedent to the theatrical release "Daffy Duck's Quackbusters" which used previously produced Looney Tunes shorts all with monster/ghost themes with newly produced bridging sequences.
"The Duxorcist" is one of the last productions featuring voice acting legend Mel Blanc. (BJ Ward plays Melissa).
Warner Brothers hadn't been producing cartoon shorts directly for theaters for decades by the time this was released in theaters. It clearly didn't lead to a revival of the format, as theatrical-exclusive cartoons still remain a rarity as of the 21st century.
This short would be fairly low in the Looney Tunes (and Daffy-specific) canon. By the tail end of the 1960s, Warner had begun outsourcing production of the vast majority of Looney-Tunes related fare (including to Warner Studios alumni outfit Depatie-Freling). The works produced were passable enough for Saturday morning programming (already awash with shorts produced in the "golden era") but almost exclusively paled in comparison to the studio's earlier Looney Tunes works. The filmmakers of "The Duxorcist" obviously meant well, but it took the "Tiny Toons Adventures" television production to bring back a certain (safely) edgy sensibility to WB cartoons that had both an adult appeal and goofy fun for kids, too.