Stupor Duck

Stupor Duck
Lobby card
Directed by	Robert McKimson
Produced by	Edward Selzer
Animation by	Ted Bonnicksen Keith Darling Russ Dyson George Grandpré Harry Love (special animation effects)
Layouts by	Robert Gribbroek
Backgrounds by	Richard H. Thomas
Color process	Technicolor
Distributed by	Warner Bros. The Vitaphone Corporation
Running time	7 min (one reel)

Stupor Duck is a Looney Tunes animated short starring Daffy Duck. A Superman parody directed by Robert McKimson, the cartoon was released July 7, 1956. The voices were performed by Mel Blanc and Daws Butler; Butler — who voiced the narrator and the newspaper editor — was uncredited.

Synopsis

Daffy Duck is cast as Stupor Duck and his alter ego, Cluck Trent. The cartoon begins as a parody of the opening to The Adventures of Superman, which-after introducing Stupor Duck as a "Strange being from another planet"-shows Stupor Duck being:

• "Faster than a bullet" (a cork fired from a toy pop gun)
• "More powerful than a speeding locomotive" (a barely functional, 1800s-style train; the phrase "speeding bullet" was normally used to describe Superman, the verb moved to the locomotive reference.)
• "Able to leap the tallest building" (the depicted tall building called the "McKimson Assocates" building [sic], with Stupor Duck's cape catching on the flagpole at the very top, causing Daffy to nearly choke)

After the parodied introduction, the film proceeds to the story:

Mild-mannered newspaper reporter Cluck Trent, taking a break from writing, overhears a conversation coming from his editor's office. The one-sided conversation is from a villain on a "corny soap opera" the editor is watching on TV. The unseen soap's villain calls himself "Aardvark Ratnik," a Russian-accented terrorist bent on world domination. Ratnik supposedly threatens widespread destruction (though his demands are never heard); his first line, after a maniacal laugh, is "You cannot stop me, Mr. Newspaper Editor!", which leads Cluck to the erroneous conclusion that Ratnik actually exists, his threats are serious, and that stopping him is a job for Stupor Duck. Cluck runs to the broom closet to change into his alter-ego (after an errant change into a witch's costume, and then a minor adjustment to Stupor Duck's shoulder pads) and begins his search for the non-existent antagonist.

One by one, Stupor Duck spots "examples" of "Aardvark's" supposed work and, before tackling each one, bellowing his battle cry, "THIS is a job for STU-U-U-POR Duck!". His search includes:

• A skyscraper being destroyed. Stupor Duck pushes the building back upright, only to be punched out by the site foreman; the building was to be demolished and replaced with a new City Hall.
• A sinking ship, which was actually a submarine conducting war games. Stupor Duck pulls the sub back to the surface and is first shot by its deck gun; when he dares them to do that again Stupor Duck is promptly blown up and sunk by one of the sub's torpedoes.
• A dynamite charge at the base of a railroad trestle as a train runs over it. It turned out to be a Warner Brothers location shoot. Stupor Duck grabs the dynamite and heads skyward, and is blown up {off-screen} by the unknowing explosives expert. The expert is abruptly showered with black feathers as the "S" shield from Stupor Duck's costume softly lands in his hand; a featherless and disgruntled Daffy walks up and grabs the shield saying, "I'll just relieve you of that, if you don't mind".
• Lastly, Stupor Duck hears a siren while unknowingly flying over government testing grounds. He spots what he believes to be an armed warhead, but is actually a government moon rocket. Right after Stupor Duck lands on the nose cone to try to stop it, the rocket launches into space, leaving behind Stupor Duck's costume in its wake.

As the rocket hurtles skyward, two rock climbers see it and shout "Up there in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's STU-U-UPOR Duck!" The final shot is of Daffy screaming, still clinging to the rocket for dear life at it streaks the moon.

Availability

• VHS- THE STARS OF SPACE JAM: DAFFY DUCK
• VHS- Looney Tunes Collectors Edition: Porky and Daffy
• DVD- Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5, Disc 1

References

• Friedwald, Will and Jerry Beck. "The Warner Brothers Cartoons." Scarecrow Press Inc., Metuchen, N.J., 1981. ISBN 0-8108-1396-3.