Detective noir was never as much fun as when Daffy took it on in this 1946 animated masterwork. Just what is it about this cartoon that makes it one of the exceptionally special and long-lasting beloved ones? It has such a great rare kind of quality and appeal about it that makes it such a brilliant little watch to this day, and I just love it. I find it to be a surrealistic ride into freaky cartoon nightmaresville! And while to me it doesn't seem like it was specifically made to be as disorienting and eerie as possible like in the best and most 'out there' of the Betty Boop shorts, it's surely uncanny and offbeat in its own very special way. I love how, for as brief as it is, it manages to quite wonderfully play into the pop culture and folklore of old comic books. I think that I must have seen it before at some point when I was very little, because for the longest time whenever I would think of vintage cartoons I always had a vivid image that would pop into my head of a figure in a shadowed room surrounded by weird colourful monster faces all angrily glaring down at him, and I never did know exactly where it was from... Then much later when I eventually just happened to watch this and it got to that part where things really do take off so magnificently as Daffy meets all of the marvelously spooky and fun bizarre criminals who all look like their namesakes and they all give chase, I was delighted as it clicked into place and the mystery of the unknown cartoon was finally solved! They're all so neat! I like the pumpkin one, the hammer-headed one, the Batman one is an especially hilarious visual play on words, but my favourite one is um.."Guess who!" I hate to negative-it-up, but I really hate that stupid campy pig, he somehow manages to single-handedly mar the ending, as well as for me at least take the whole short down a peg! If it weren't for him, I'd happily bestow a mighty ten! The short just demands it because it's still so amazing, and it will forever be. It is indeed fantastic and unbelievable!!!
