Porky's Duck Hunt



"Porky:"Hey, th-th-th-that wasn't in the script!" Daffy: "Don't let it worry ya, Skipper. I'm just a crazy, darn fool duck. Hoo-hoo Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!""

- Porky establishing a Looney Tunes hallmark, and Daffy giving his very first lines of dialogue.

Porky's Duck Hunt is a 1937 Looney Tunes short directed by Fred Avery. It is a landmark short in the series, being one of the first truly zany cartoons and thus codifying what distinguished a Warner Bros. cartoon from anyone else's cartoons. This was also the debut appearance of then unnamed Daffy Duck.

The plot of the short is fairly simple--a young Porky Pig goes out on a duck hunt, only to find trouble from the other hunters, as well as one particularly pesky duck roaming the ponds...

This short was an immediate smash hit with audiences, and thus received a follow up a year later, Daffy Duck and Egghead.

Watch it on Dailymotion. A colorized version from 1967 is available for download at the Internet Archive.

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""Hey! Th-th-that wasn't in the script!" (with script in hand)."
 * Ascended Extra: Though this is most notably remembered as Daffy Duck's first appearance, he doesn't really have a very prominent role, he's just one of several ducks to vex Porky, and a decent amount of the humor featuring Daffy doesn't involve him personally (he only has two lines). He also has an extremely different voice than the one they gave him in his next cartoon. Despite all of this, it was enough to make him a Looney Tunes star.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: Porky's reaction to seeing Daffy throw his dog back towards him when he thinks his dog got Daffy:


 * Breakout Character: Daffy Duck.
 * Credits Gag: The ending title card has Daffy make one last appearance, bouncing and looping around the letters. This was because Bob Clampett (who was animating for Tex at the time) had some leftover animation he wanted to put in but couldn't within the actual cartoon, so Tex allowed him to put it in the credits.
 * The Golden Age of Animation
 * Incoming Ham: "It's me again!"
 * Juggling Loaded Guns: "It's not loaded. W-w-w-watch... *BOOM!*"
 * Lazy Artist: Zig-zagged. A scene with Porky in a boat has the cel of the boat's oars painted side up.
 * Looney Tunes in the Thirties
 * Mad Hatter: In the first line Daffy ever delivers, he cheerfully admits that he's crazy.
 * Public Domain Soundtrack: The opening uses the classic tune "A-Hunting I Will Go" and at one point, some fishes get drunk and appropriately sing the classic drunk song "Moonlight Bay".
 * Subverted: A cockeyed hunter rises from the blinds, and Carl Stalling cues up "I Only Have Eyes For You."
 * Sign Language: "This is an electric eel, folks!"
 * Screwy Squirrel: Daffy Duck, natch.
 * Zany Cartoon