Studio: Warner Bros. Cartoons
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures / The Vitaphone Corporation
Short Synopsis
At the Daily Planet-style newspaper office, mild-mannered reporter Cluck Trent, Daffy Duck in glasses, is hammering at his typewriter. In the editor's office, the editor is watching a television soap opera in which a villain named Aardvark Ratnik vows to blow up the city. Overhearing it through the wall, Cluck believes the threat is real. He dashes off, changes into his secret identity, Stupor Duck, "strange visitor from another planet", in a costume with a big S on the chest, and sets out to save the city from a criminal who doesn't exist. Everything goes wrong. Leaping into action, he runs head first into walls, gets knocked dizzy with stars circling his head, flies into obstacles and, trying to stop an imaginary bomb plot, causes most of the destruction himself. Convinced to the end that Aardvark Ratnik is out there, Stupor Duck ends the film far from where he meant to be, still searching for the villain.
Why It Matters
- The film parodies the 1950s television series The Adventures of Superman, from the "faster than a speeding bullet"-style narration to the mild-mannered reporter, and Daffy is perfect casting: a hero whose self-importance far outstrips his competence. The joke that the menace is a TV soap villain is a sly comment on a new medium.
- It is one of a run of Daffy parodies of popular heroes, and Robert McKimson's version shows the 1950s Daffy, a vain, accident-prone everyman rather than the screwball of the 1930s. It reflects how quickly television was becoming the cartoons' subject as well as their competitor.
Notes and Trivia
- Daws Butler, later the voice of Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound, is in the voice cast alongside Mel Blanc.
- See also: Superman (The Mad Scientist) (1941), The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946).