Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies

Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies is a 1972 animated one-hour TV-movie (with a live-action segment near the end) that was part of The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie. In this Filmation-produced movie, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and other Looney Tunes characters interact with the characters from the Filmation series Groovie Goolies.

This movie is notable for being the one and only time that Warner Bros. "loaned out" their famous Looney Tunes characters to appear in a Filmation production (otherwise they were a silent partner). Warner Bros. had shut down their animation studio in 1969. While Warner Bros. had outsourced production to other companies since the 1960s, it was usually to studios run by former Warner Bros. alumni (such as Friz Freleng and later Chuck Jones), something that was not the case with Filmation.

Synopsis
Daffy Duck is in Hollywood producing a movie about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, starring himself; also appearing in the film are Porky Pig, Petunia Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, Wile E. Coyote, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, and Charlie Dog.

At Horrible Hall, the Groovie Goolies are watching a television interview in which Daffy’s talking about his new movie, when their program is interrupted by a ghoulish being calling himself The Phantom of the Flickers; he announces his intention to destroy every film that Daffy Duck and company ever made, including their current King Arthur film. Being a huge fan of Daffy, Frankie goes to Hollywood to offer his help, and the other Horrible Hall residents go along with him.

Mayhem ensues when the Looneys and the Goolies first meet, but they eventually settle down and continue filming the movie. But when the Phantom disguises himself as each of the Goolies, Daffy and the others then think they're in league with the Phantom and run off. The Phantom suddenly grabs the film and, disguised as Hauntleroy, tries to escape from the Goolies by running through a magic mirror into “Mad Mirror Land” (i.e., the real world). Frankie, Drac, and Wolfie chase after him, and after a cartoonishly slapstick pursuit they bring (or more rather sneeze) the Phantom and the film back to their world.

The Phantom turns out to be Drac’s long-lost uncle Claude Chaney, a formerly famous silent film actor who was acting out of anger over black-and-white films being replaced by color films. Daffy gives Claude a job, the movie wins an award, and the Goolies head for home.

Voices

 * Mel Blanc: Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer J. Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester J. Pussycat, Tweety Pie, Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew, Foghorn Leghorn
 * Howard Morris: Franklin “Frankie” Frankenstein, Wolfgang “Wolfie” Wolfman, Mummy
 * Larry Storch: Count Tom Dracula, Claude Chaney/Phantom of the Flickers
 * Jane Webb: Hagatha, Petunia Pig

Availability
This movie has never been officially released on home video (due to various rights issues), but traders on the Internet have been recording and selling DVDs of this film, most of which were originally black-and-white kinescopes of the original broadcast. Non-official copies of the original color production have also emerged. However, in the UK, it was released by Select Video in the late 1980s, and on sale in Woolworths. In this instance, the live action sequence was not present, and it was replaced by an out of shot collision before rejoining the original animated sequence. In this case, the title card was simply called Groovie Ghouls.

Another notable feature of the UK release was that the Select Video ident was shorter, and had no jingle. In addition, the end credits were different, as they had to edit out the names of the actors in the live action sequence which was not included, and also had other credits, presumably for UK based post production at Select Video.