The Duxorcist (1987) User Reviews

Daffy Duck: Ghostbuster

[CuriosityKilledShawn · 7/10 · 23 March 2005]

This Looney Tunes cartoon was one of the shorts edited into Daffy's feature length Quackbusters movie. He plays a Paranormalist, who deals with everything from ghouls and ghosts and goblins to aliens and UFO's. A possessed woman calls him up begging to be exorsized. Good job Daffy knows what he's doing for a change.

It's a funny short as the possessed woman turns into a vampire creature whenever Daffy isn't looking. But Daffy seems right at home in this particular guise as he did Duck Dodgers or Dorlock Homes. I'd like to see more of this in the future or maybe even the Quackbusters DVD if Warner ever decide to release it.

Noel Blanc says that the night nurses . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 8 January 2017]

. . . failed to put the bed rails up when his dad Mel was hospitalized for a sore throat (Hey, this is Hollywood, where they rush folks to the ICU for hang-nails, ear wax, and zits!) shortly after Mel Blanc voiced Daffy in THE DUXORCIST, and his dad's career was cut short when his frail frame could not recover from a tumble off his hospital bed (don't forget that Mel was then 209 in Duck Years). Apart from that tragic back story, this Looney Tune is not quite as funny as its title might lead viewers to expect. There's no pea soup projectile vomiting, 360-degree head spins, or bloody crucifixes here, all of which could be counted upon for hysterical lampooning if THE SIMPSONS made THE BARXOCIST an episode in their annual Treehouse of Horror. Instead, THE DUXORCIST gives us a stale SYBIL reference and a few lame GHOSTBUSTERS riffs. Though this is far from the worst Later Day Looney Tune, it's more of an argument for pulling the plug on the Termite Terrace Nursing Home than it is for wishing that Warner Bros. had churned out dozens more animated shorts just like it in the 1980s.

Mary had a little lamb... BUT I ATE IT!

[griffin84 · 17 August 2004]

If there was ever an award for freakiest Looney Tunes short, it would probably go to "The Duxorcist", which plays off "The Exorcist". Most people would wonder how Warner Bros. could produce a cartoon that parodied what is considered to

be the #1 scariest movie of all time. However, they did it, though it is still pretty scary (note: most young children probably won't like this).

Playing right along the movie "Daffy Duck's Quackbusters", Daffy gets a house call from a young duck-lady who says there's something paranormal going on

with her household appliances. Of course, what Daffy doesn't realize is that the haunting isn't with the microwave or the blender... but with the lady herself. Daffy tries to exorcise the demons out of her (thankfully, without the use of a priest and holy water), but may have a few problems when the demons leave

her body and see Daffy as a new host...

Despite being very funny, this cartoon is about as spooky as Looney Tunes got. Most fans of the original movie will love it, but younger children will probably not be too thrilled, especially when the lady starts to transform into the monster. Suggestion: put the kids to bed and put this on for the teenagers, they'll love it.

The reasons I like this rather spooky short:

[Mightyzebra · 9/10 · 13 July 2008]

1. Even though this was made in 1987, the era where Daffy Duck was portrayed as being indescribably cynical and greedy, here he is actually very nice. In fact, I do not think I've seen him nicer in any of his other episodes.

2. This episode is very funny and the humour has a modern touch, which is a great deal more different to the humour in Daffy's first few episodes.

3. The theme of this episode works well and the makers of the episode made it work well. (The theme is a exorcism theme, Daffy tries to exorcise the evil spirits out of a woman duck).

The animation is also quite good as well, but it is nothing worth ranting on about.

In this Daffy Duck episode, Daffy works as a Paramonormalist, who rids people of monsters, ghouls and the like. A woman duck calls Daffy up to say she has a problem with kitchen appliances, which is a lie. Daffy comes over and checks out her fridge and oven, thinking he will find ghouls and monsters inside. However, it is not the woman duck's kitchen appliances that are full of monsters, it is in fact something more personal...

I recommend this to any person who likes Daffy Duck and Looney Tunes and to anyone who is over 12. Young children may be rather disturbed by this short, so they ought to stay away. Enjoy "The Duxorcist"! :-)

Interesting

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 16 July 2010]

I liked the Duxorcist on the whole. Admittedly I prefer the Looney Tunes cartoons of the 1940s-50s, but The Duxorcist was very interesting, and when I saw Daffy Duck's Quackbusters recently, I was surprised at how well it fitted with the story of that film. Why do I say that? It has a good story about Daffy owning an exorcism service and a possessed woman who turns into a creature when Daffy isn't looking. The animation is nice to look at, and the music is good. The dialogue is funny on the whole and the gags are like the story, interesting. The cartoon moves swiftly, and it was nice to see Melissa again, quite an alluring duck here. I liked Daffy too, instead of cynical and greedy, he is really nice, and this was a refreshing change. I do like him when he is cynical and greedy, it's just that it is nice to have a change once in a while. Overall, very interesting and has an atmospheric tone to it. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Hip Concept But Very Average short subject for Daffy

[hypestyle · 5/10 · 5 July 2021]

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.