"Run Run Sweet Road Runner" (1965, Merrie Melodies)
The first of eleven tight-budget Road Runner cartoons directed by Rudy Larriva. Larriva's studio, Format Films, created these and a few Speedy Gonzales cartoons for DePatie-Freleng after the initial 1964 closedown and reopening of WB Cartoons. There's really not a lot to this cartoon in terms of gags. Whereas the original Chuck Jones series had an average of 11 or so gags per cartoon, this short has 3 major gag scenes, with neither character moving a lot. Not near the best of the 11 cartoons in its series, it still has some memorable moments. The Road Runner challenges Wile E. Coyote to a game of hopscotch, which send him off a cliff. the Coyote rigs up a sharp spiked grate and disguises it as a shade canopy, but when he steps under it to bait the trap with birdseed, the sun fries the rope and the grate falls on Wile E.! Wile E. disguises a lighning rod as a female road runner and himself as an Indian, and does a rain dance to electrify it. When the Road Runner goes near it and it doesn't work, Wile E. decides to give it an extra power boost, but this time, the lightning strikes him instead!
