Daffy – The Commando
| Daffy – The Commando | |
|---|---|
| Looney Tunes (Daffy Duck) series | |
| Directed by | I. Freleng |
| Produced by | Leon Schlesinger |
| Story by | Michael Maltese |
| Voices by | Mel Blanc |
| Music by | Carl W. Stalling |
| Animation by | Ken Champin |
| Studio | Leon Schlesinger Productions |
| Distributed by |
Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
| Release date(s) | November 20, 1943 (United States) |
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Running time | 7 minutes 22 seconds |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Daffy – The Commando is a Warner Bros. cartoon in the Looney Tunes series released on November 20, 1943, and directed by Friz Freleng. It features the character Daffy Duck.
A German commander – Von Vultur – is tempestuously pacing back and forth while fuming and spluttering furiously about how many American commandos have managed to slip into Germany undetected, while a snippet from Wagner's Das Rheingold plays on the soundtrack. He gets a telegram from the "Gestinko Gestapo", threatening him with his ‘ka-rear’ if he lets ‘vun’ more ‘kommando’ through (the letter is signed "The Apes Of Wrath" and shows three apes' heads; if you look closely, the apes are caricatures of Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini, the last of whom is crossed out). The settings recalls World War I trenches more than any actual scene of World War II. Hearing an American warplane overhead, he calls in his servant – Schultz – whom he abuses by knocking him regularly over his helmet with a mallet. They run outside and use a searchlight to search for any more landing commandos and eventually spot one, who just happens to be Daffy floating down on a parachute, whilst singing Billy Bennet's "She was Poor But She Was Honest" in a Cockney accent.
After a quick shout of "Put out those lights!" gets the searchlight turned off temporarily and allows him to land unseen, Daffy uses his fingers on the searchlight’s lens to make shadows of animated puppets and dancing chorus girls on the clouds to distract the Germans. When Von Vultur chases Daffy behind a curtain that says "asbestos", Daffy makes a face similar to the stereotypical Japanese faces used in cartoons at the time (see, for example, Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips), causing Von Vultur to run off frightened.
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