Monday, October 2, 2017

1979 Quacula

Quacula is an animated vampire duck created by Filmation that debuted on September 8, 1979, on the first episode of The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle. Quacula (voiced by Frank Welker) is depicted as an anthropomorphic pale blue vampire duck with a Daffy Duck-like beak and fangs, dressed in a blue jacket and a black cape with a red lining. He slept by day in a white coffin shaped like an egg, in the basement of a house owned by an anthropomorphic bear named Theodore (voiced by Norm Prescott). Every night Quacula would rise from his coffin and try to terrify Theodore and others, but he would never really succeed; his antics tended to be more comical than frightening. Also, Theodore would come up with one plan after another to rid himself of Quacula, but always fails to do so.

Cartoonist Scott Shaw filed suit against Filmation due to the fact that he had created a character named Count Duckula for the comic book Quack! #1 (July 1976), published by Star*Reach. The matter was settled out of court, and after 16 episodes Quacula was dropped from the show, which was shortened from an hour to a half-hour. Those shorts had to be edited off subsequent rebroadcasts. Count Duckula would later receive his own self-titled animated comedy-drama dark fantasy series created by British studio Cosgrove Hall Films and produced by Thames Television that aired from 6 September 1988 to 16 February 1993. Count Duckula was a spin-off from Danger Mouse, a series in which the Count Duckula character was a recurring villain.

Congrats if your manage to watch it to the very end. It's truly atrocious, but I love Quacula's catchphrase "Bummer." Much of the music came from other Filmation animated series The Groovie Goolies and several of the Archies tv shows. YouTube user Grimbot2 uploaded all 16 Quacula shorts, so binge to your heart's content, as the shorts add up to just under 2 hours of crazy, weird and bad comedy. A bootleg DVD of the video below, plus other rare cartoons and series, can be purchased at OnTheRunVideo.com




No comments:

Post a Comment