"To Beep Or Not To Beep" (1963, Merrie Melodies)
This cartoon is unique for several reasons. One, it is the second-to-last cartoon Chuck Jones directed before leaving the original Warner Bros. cartoon studio. Two, it pulls much of its footage from the "Adventures Of The Road Runner" featurette from a year earlier. Three, parts of it were featured prominently in Chuck Jones' 1979 "Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie". To ensure that it got even more mileage, "The Adventures Of The Road Runner" was eventually edited into 2 shorts for TV, "Road Runner A Go Go" and "Zip Zip Hooray". It's not surprising, then, that this is one of the best-remembered Roadrunner cartoons.
A lot of great gags are crammed into this one. There are
no mock latin names for the characters at all, the cartoon instead opens with
Wile E. Coyote reading a cook book and licking his chops at "Road Runner
Surprise", just as the Roadrunner himself runs up and gives the Coyote a
surprise of his own. The Roadrunner gives a "beep beep!" that startles
Wile E. and sends him jumping into the air, getting his head stuck in an
overhanging rock. Wile E. attempts to catch the Roadrunner in a rope snare, but
misses, and stumbles off a cliff. The snare hooks a boulder on the way down, but
it's too late...the rope's too long for it to save Wile E. from hitting the
ground. Foolishly, he gets up, dazed, and pulls the rope. The rock falls and
squashes the Coyote into an accordion-like distortion. Wile E. next tries a good
old fashioned chase, but the Road Runner is so fast he causes the pavement to
ripple and a bridge to warp just before Wile E. reaches it, and as he falls down
the canyon, a cactus falls with him! He flies back up, screaming. Next Wile E.
tries a spring attached to a rock, presumably to bounce him off for an extra
burst of speed...but the rock moves instead, and he gets tangled in his
contraption as the rock keeps rolling. The spring and rock bounce around and
ultimately leave Wile E. smashed again. A crane and wrecking ball achieve a
similar effect. Then come the infamous catapult gags...Wile E. tries a catapult
that keeps malfunctioning, but he's foolish enough to keep trying. It gets
stuck, and as he climbs onto it to investigate, it fires, flinging him on the
rock and sending him on a wild ride that gets him smashed into cliffs and
bounced off power lines that fling him rich back to the catapult, which flings
him into the dirt followed by the rock! A close-up of the catapult reveals that
it was made by a rather unusual company, and it's not Acme!
The only thing that makes this cartoon fall short of perfect is the music. Once you've seen "Adventures of the Road Runner", in which a lot of this footage is scored by Milt Franklyn, you will most likely agree. Bill Lava creates an ominous, tense and unfittingly dark-sounding score for a cartoon that has a bright, airy feel to it. Lava's music is often droning, brass-filled and uninspired, and this score is no exception.
