Plane Daffy (1944)

I'll tell you why so serious

Beautiful, moving film.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

. . . while top Sex Education honchos slather PLANE DAFFY with praise for its uninhibited flogging of their ideal for Oral Sex to be reciprocated to the female in a heterosexual coupling. Obviously, Warner Bros. had a dual purpose in promulgating PLANE DAFFY. Shaming the World-Wrecking Top Nazi leaders into shooting themselves in the head (and, sure enough, the Power of Warner's suggestion soon led "Der Fuhrer" himself, Adolf Hitler, into aping the cartoon versions of his henchmen Goering and Goebels here at PLANE DAFFY's close by shooting himself in the mouth in Real Life a few minutes after he viewed this animated short in his Bunker) was one of their priorities. More importantly, the Warner Bros. foresaw the havoc a Baby Boom would cause in America as all those millions of servicemen returned to their female counterparts, who lacked The Pill and most of the other Civilized Means of Contraception. The only hope in keeping the U.S. Social Fabric from being ripped apart, with Boomers such as Hillary the the Trumpster STILL fighting like over-crowded kindergartners this far into the 21st Century, was the promotion of Population Stability through fully reciprocal Oral Sex. A close viewing of PLANE DAFFY tunes up 14 overt or subliminal allusions to female-on-male activity of this nature, as well as 27 male-to-female connections. Without Warner's timely PLANE DAFFY warning, most of the Real Life tongue wagging never would have happened, and Millennials would be coping with TWICE AS MANY BOOMERS underfoot as we're actually putting up with Today!

Frank Tashlin's 'Plane Daffy' is a wonderful wartime cartoon which is very definitely aimed at adults. Aside from containing three suicides and possibly the most cigarettes in any one scene in animation history, 'Plane Daffy' is based around the character Hatta Mari, a leggy blonde nazi pigeon who seduces military secrets out of carrier pigeons. This makes for an extremely sexually charged cartoon, quite literally in one case! Similar in many ways to the excellent Private Snafu cartoon rumours (which was written by Dr. Seuss), 'Plane Daffy' tells most of its story in rhyme, until Daffy finally arrives and the wisecracks get a little looser. Daffy, despite having top billing, doesn't appear in the cartoon until it's more than half way finished but when he does, he knocks the action up a notch from witty setup to lunatic conclusion.Professing to be a woman hater (!), Daffy nevertheless succumbs to Hatti Mari immediately, resulting in the longest animated screen kiss I've ever seen. Tashlin, always the Warner director who owed the most to live action techniques, treats Hatta Mari as if she were a real life screen goddess, never missing a chance to present a titillating angle of her top-heavy figure! The sexual tension between her and Daffy adds a new angle to an age-old chase format and Tashlin's direction is extremely energetic. Special mention must go to Warren Foster's script, which not only features the excellent rhyming narration ("relaxes" is rhymed with "enemy axis", to give but one example of the unpredictable wit on show) but several absolutely hilarious gags. My favourites involve a military-secret-dispenser and a fridge light. There are also lots of subtler in-jokes, such as the fact that Hatta Mari is not only a spoonerism of Matta Hari but also an old fashioned slang term for a loose woman (you get her pregnant, you hatta mari her! Get it?). 'Plane Daffy' is the Warner animation studio at its bawdiest and also, frequently, at its funniest.

Frank Tashlin is not one of the first names that come to mind when discussing Warner Brothers cartoons. with Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett and Friz Freleng being more well-known. That's not a surprise at all. But it's a bit sad to think that the general public doesn't know more of him, particularly his work in animation. He worked, like many people, for more than one studio and also made the successful switch to live-action direction. A very talented man, to say the least. This short is vintage Tashlin and he handles the material perfectly. Everything here is great. The ending, where Goering and Goebbels suffer a momentary bout of candor that costs them dearly, is absolutely priceless! Hatta Mari is a precursor to Jessica Rabbit, as is Tex Avery's Red character. Only Mari IS BAD-as well as drawn that way! Pay particular attention to the scene in the squadron barracks when the commander displays her wanted poster. Marvelous short and well worth tracking down. Most highly recommended.

High-speed Tashlin wackiness! When one after another of a company of Allied carrier pigeons falls prey to the seductive wiles of "Queen of the Spies" Hatta Mari, self-described woman-hater Daffy Duck is sent to carry military secrets through her net. After a frenetic battle at slinky Mari's pad Daffy's secret document is revealed (via x-ray machine; he swallowed it) to Hitler plus Mussolini and Hirohito --who have to shoot themselves through the head after agreeing with it! All the hallmarks of a wartime 'toon -- violence, sex appeal, ridicule of the enemy --plus Tashlin's signature brashness and blinding speed. Ace!