The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Golden Age Collection features 25 digitally remastered cartoons from the Walter Lantz Archive, from The Sleeping Princess (1939) to Rough Riding Hood (1966). The biggest star to come out of his productions is Woody Woodpecker and this set features the character in eight cartoons. The remaining shorts are a mix of Lantz recurring characters and one-offs.
Buy The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Golden Age CollectionWoodpecker in the Rough (1952) finds Woody at the golf course gambling with a tough guy. Woody brings home a dog from pet store in Get Lost! Little Doggy (1964) but landlord Mrs Meany isn’t having it. Greedy Gabby Gator (1963) is Gabby’s final cartoon. The circle of life plays out as Gabby tries to make a meal out of Woody while a crocodile tries to eat Gabby. The titular Heap Big Hepcat (1960) is Mooseface. He returns to his tribe to marry the chief’s daughter, Hummingbird. To prove himself, he must hunt for meat and tries to bring in Woody. It’s more corny then offensive.
Romp in a Swamp (1959) should look familiar as Woody and Gabby Gator try to eat each other. Rough Riding Hood (1966) sees Woody fill in for Red. The wolf sounds like Frank Fontaine, like Looney Tunes’ Pete Puma. A mad professor tries to switch the brains of Woody and an ape in Science Friction (1963). In Billion Dollar Boner (1960), O’Hoolihan receives a check for $1 billion with the stipulation that to keep it he must not harm a bird, so of course, Woody tests his patience. The story has a good twist at the end.
Andy Panda Goes Fishing (1940) in his second cartoon. He lives in nature and asks his turtle friend, Mr. Whippletree (voiced like Jack Benny’s Rochester) to go fishing. Pygmy panda hunters, the reason this cartoon hasn’t aired on TV, try to capture him to take Andy for the Chicago zoo. No longer an animal living in the wild, Good-Bye Mr. Moth (1942) finds Andy running a tailor shop where he has to deal with a hungry moth. The Bongo Punch (1957) is a one-off musical short starring Pepito Chickeeto, son of a boxing rooster, but Pepito would rather play drums than fight.
Chilly Willy and Smedley the dog are featured in a pair. Chilly is the Little Televillain (1958) as he tries to get an audition with a TV studio boss but Smedley is tasked with stopping him, leading to Smedley on the receiving end of a lot of slapstick abuse. In Fractured Friendship (1965), Smedley is tired of the cold and wants to go to Hawaii. Chilly doesn’t want his friend to leave and foils his plans.
Country folk Maw and Paw were based on the Universal’s Ma and Pa Kettle film series. Paw’s Night Out (1955) sees Paw trying to sneak in the house after a night drinking with the fellas because he doesn’t want to wake Maw. Milford the pig has some elaborate ideas that rival Wile E. Coyote. In Pig in a Pickle (1954), Milford is kidnapped on his birthday by the Boomer Brothers who want him for dinner. There’s a great gag where a box is left on the brothers’ porch with Ma in it. She repeats “tick, tick, tick” so they think it’s a bomb and run away. Milford also thinks it’s a bomb and throws the box down a well.
Homer the pigeon needs glasses in Pigeon Holed (1956) and this leads to him enlisting into the Air Corps. Basically it’s a Mr. Magoo cartoon. The Talking Dog (1956) is a Maggie and Sam cartoon. They are a middle-class couple. Sam is tasked with taking the mortgage payment to the bank but he spends it on a talking dog, which could lead towards riches if they can navigate show business. Witty Kitty (1960) sees Doc the cat is tricked into stealing a turkey where a dog resides. Mice Hickory and Dickory are there also, but have little to do in the story, which may explain why this was the trio’s last cartoon together.
The next three cartoon have a soft pastel look of the era they were made. Adventures of Tom Thumb Jr. (1940) finds Tom and his grasshopper pal, Happy Hopper, come ashore from sailing. The story takes an odd turn as old woman thinks Tom is a baby yet he fits in the palm of her hand. They seek food in her house, but are foiled by other animals. The Sleeping Princess (1939) is a variation on Sleeping Beauty. A princess is born and all the fairies but Destiny get invited to celebration. Bitter, Destiny tricks the Princess into pricking her finger and falling asleep for 100 years. After almost 100 years go by, Destiny’s invitation is found under a rug. She sends a prince (voiced by Mel Blanc) to awaken the sleeping princess.In Kittens’ Mittens (1940), three bratty kittens won’t play with an orphan kitty. When they lose their mittens, they lie to their mama and blame the orphan for stealing them before coming clean. The kittens are unlikable, which taints all that’s good about the cartoon.
Syncopated Sioux (1940) is a series of gags, laughing with and laughing at Native Americans. While there are some funny bits, they are offset by the knowledge that Hollywood typically never saw them as anything more than comic relief or cannon fodder. In The Flying Turtle (1953), Herman Turtle dreams of flying. Eventually, an eagle takes him up into space and releases him. Somehow, Herman doesn’t burn up upon re-entry but he does get wings, in a dark ending. The Mouse and the Lion (1953) sees a mouse on safari trying to capture a lion in the jungle for the circus. Flea for Two (1955) is Avery’s The Hick Chick redone with fleas as a country gal caught between her country fella and a flea from the city
The video has been given a 1080p/MPEG-4 AVC encoded transfer displayed at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The colors appear in bold hues, aside from aforementioned cartoons that have a soft, pastel look. Blacks are inky and whites are bright. The image looks clean, mostly free from dirt and defect, although Woodpecker in the Rough has a faint discoloration on the right side.
The audio is available in DTS 2.0 Mono. Dialogue is clear. In Woodpecker in the Rough, the audio is a bit rough as it gets too loud at times and and distorts. The Talking Dog (1956) has a lot of hiss during the opening sequence, which then disappears. The music during the Universal Studio logo can be distorted.
The Bonus Features are:
- Cartoonland Mysteries (11 min) – A look at how an animated cartoon is made.
- Spook-A-Nanny (8 min) – A Halloween cartoon with Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, and other Lantz characters playing tricks on Woody.
- Lantz hosts a number of archival featurettes that cover Drawing Woody and Andy (5 min), Directing Animated Cartoons (4 min), Timing a Cartoon (4 min), Character Movement (3 min), The Animator’s Job (4 min), Using Backgrounds (4 min), Drawing with Walter Lantz (5 min) where he details a new book that shows how the studio’s characters are drawn, and Storyboarding Woody Woodpecker (4 min).
The Woody Woodpecker and Friends Golden Age Collection is geared more for the serious animation collector because the mix might not strong enough for the causal cartoon fan. The high-definition video looks good, but the audio needs improvement.
