The Night of the Living Duck

The Night of the Living Duck is a six-minute 1988 Merrie Melodies cartoon starring Daffy Duck, directed by Greg Ford and Terry Lennon.^[1] It was released to theatres as a part of Daffy Duck's Quackbusters on September 24, 1988 and is shown before the film in all of its releases.

The title is a pun on Night of the Living Dead, although the cartoon has nothing to do with that film's theme of a zombie apocalypse.

This short was also one of Mel Blanc's final performances, as it was released less than a year before his death.

Plot[]

Daffy Duck, indulging in his comic book fandom in a sequence reminiscent of his earlier film The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, is reading a scary comic book called "Hideous Tales" (issue #176). The comic's "Noseman" story ends in a cliffhanger involving Smogzilla, and Daffy rifles his bookcase looking for the next issue ("It's a veritable collector's item!"). While doing so however, a monster clock falls and beans Daffy, knocking him out.

In his dream, Daffy finds himself as the featured act in a nightclub where the customers are classic movie monsters consisting of Count Dracula and his brides, Frankenstein's monster and his bride, Larry Talbot, Imhotep's mummy form, the Gill-man, the Fly, Medusa, Leatherface, the Invisible Man, the Headless Horseman, a cyclops, a slime monster, a two-headed man, some skeletons, and some unidentified monsters as well as Alfred E. Neuman. Daffy appears unable to sing, but there was a bottle of "Eau de Tormé" in Daffy's dressing room, which makes him sing like Mel Tormé. After drinking the spray's entire contents for maximum effect, he sings "Monsters Lead Such Interesting Lives" to the room with a ghost named "Ghouley" playing the piano. The monsters love the song.

Then he goes around the room, greeting the patrons. But his good-natured ribbing of Smogzilla doesn't go over well with the giant lizard where Daffy quoted things like "Say, Smog baby, leveled any major cities lately?", "You know, Smogzilla's just like any unemployed actor, except when he pounds the pavement, it registers a ten on the Richter scale!", "Oh, what's the matter? The public not buying those cheap special effects anymore?" Smogzilla then eats Daffy.

Daffy wakes up to find himself stuck in a wastebasket, along with the comic he was looking for (Hideous Tales issue #177) with "Smogzilla" on the cover. Daffy scoffs and Smogzilla on the cover comes to life saying "You were expecting maybe Calvin Coolidge?"

References[]

External links[]

• The Night of the Living Duck at Internet Movie Database