Warner Bros. Releases Over 50 More Looney Tunes Classics from the Vault

When it comes to honoring its rich animation heritage, no studio does more in the world of physical media than Warner Bros. Through their Warner Archive boutique label and under the impeccable stewardship of film historian George Feltenstein, Warners has been consistent since the Laserdisc days in restoring, preserving, and remastering the studio’s cartoons and making them available for home viewing in optimum packages.

That tradition continues this month with the release of “Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault: Volume 2,” a Blu-ray release consisting of over 50 essential cartoons, at least half of which have never been released in HD.

Assembled by Feltenstein and fellow animation expert Jerry Beck, the collection showcases classic appearances by Looney Tunes royalty (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig), but also digs deeper to celebrate more obscure characters like Conrad Cat and Angelo the Mighty Flea.

Even when it comes to the most famous Looney Tunes characters, Feltenstein and Beck unearth cartoons that aren’t among the most frequently revived. Tex Avery’s 1941 short “The Heckling Hare,” for example, features an early Bugs Bunny appearance that crystallizes the rabbit’s sarcastic personality and laidback sadism. It’s one of Avery’s last cartoons for Warner Bros. before he left the studio over creative differences, and it provides an instructive comparison piece with later, slightly softened approaches to Bugs taken by less anarchistic directors.

“Collector’s Vault: Volume 2” also makes room for important Warner Bros. auteurs who are not as well known as Avery, Frank Tashlin, and Chuck Jones (though they’re all here too). The set contains several cartoons directed by Art Davis, who only worked at Warner Bros. for a few years in the late ’40s, but helmed a number of seminal films. The best one featured in the “Vault” collection is “Bowery Bugs,” a hilarious 1949 gem that finds Bugs Bunny in 1880s New York interacting with real-life Brooklyn Bridge-jumper Steve Brodie.

Another vintage Bugs cartoon, “A-Lad-In His Lamp,” kicks off the “Vault” lineup and serves as a perfect example of what these Warner Archives releases do so well. A very funny movie in which Bugs rubs a lamp and interacts with a genie voiced by future Mr. Magoo (and Thurston Howell) Jim Backus, the Robert McKimson-directed short is remastered from the original negative, and it looks and sounds incredible — if you ever wanted a reference disc to show off your TV’s color spectrum, this “Vault” collection is the one to buy.

The set also features several essential Chuck Jones films, including one of the best Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner shorts, “Stop! Look! And Hasten!” (which will be familiar to Kubrick enthusiasts as the cartoon Danny watches in “The Shining”) and one of Jones’ most entertaining Daffy Duck vehicles (“You Were Never Duckier,” which shows Daffy at a transition point between the mania of the Avery-Clampett era and the cranky greed of Jones’ “Rabbit Fire”). These Jones pieces and several others are accompanied by audio commentaries on which animation historians Michael Barrier, Greg Ford, and Eric Goldberg provide valuable context.

At a time when other studios seem largely content with licensing the bulk of their catalogs to independent boutique labels (a development which has ushered in a new golden age of physical media, since paradoxically the studios’ indifference to their own libraries has handed responsibility over to cinephiles who actually care about these movies), Warner Archive‘s commitment to the Looney Tunes legacy is to be lauded and cherished. (They’re also on a roll with their live-action releases this month, putting out exquisite transfers of Vincente Minnelli’s “Tea and Sympathy,” the Humphrey Bogart obscurity “It All Came True,” and the Astaire-Rogers classic “The Gay Divorcee.”)

Whether Feltenstein, Beck, and their colleagues will be able to continue their essential work when Warner Bros. changes hands is anybody’s guess, but for now they’re moving full steam ahead — with Volume 2 set for release, “Looney Tunes Vault Collection: Volume 3” is already in the works.

“Looney Tunes Collector’s Vault: Volume 2” will be released on Blu-ray by Warner Archive on March 24.