Daffy's Back

By RICHARD CORLISS

Talk about your comebacks. This character was a star from the moment he was hatched in 1937. Through every comic humiliation that befell him -- whether getting vamped by a transvestite rabbit or fricasseed by an irate hunter -- he displayed the bravura resilience of a born loser. This master thespian could play an existential hero (Duck Amuck), a base canard (You Ought to Be in Pictures), a hard-breathing hoofer (Show Biz Bugs) or a World War II draft dodger (Draftee Daffy). Wily farceur, dynamite showman, he made 126 pictures before retiring in 1968. For years he could be seen only on kiddie TV shows or -- oh, the ignominy of it all! -- commercials. But now he has returned, pretty much in triumph, to the big screen. Daffy Duck in The Duxorcist. Wow!

Daffy was not real, of course -- just a sheaf of drawings flipped past the eye at 24 frames per second. But the comic artistry of such directors as Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett made Daffy and the other denizens of the Warner Bros. cartoon barnyard seem as vivid as Sly Stallone and twice as funny. They surely seemed so to Greg Ford, a scholar-evangelist who has mounted cartoon retrospectives at museums and revival houses. Last year Warners hired him and Animator Terry Lennon to write and direct the little black duck's comeback vehicle, a 7 min. 41 sec. parody of The Exorcist and Ghostbusters.

GHOULS R US reads the legend on Daffy's office window. He's just the spook sleuth to help a comely se-duck-tress who needs some exorcise. There are homages aplenty to the old cartoons -- lascivious bulging eyes, deft wordplay (in pig Latin) and that bizarre sound effect that suggests a gargoyle gargling -- and laughs aseveral. The pace lags in spots, but any lulls allow the viewer to savor the glory of full, hand-drawn animation. And Daffy is as raffish as ever, talking like Freud or stalking like Groucho. At the end, three ghostly Shmoos chase Daffy down the street as his exorcised client drawls a warm, "Y'all come back now, y'hear?" Anyone who grew up on Warners cartoons is likely to say the same to Ford, Lennon and their wondrous little Daffy redux. R.C.