Hopalong Casualty

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Hopalong Casualty is a 1960 Warner Brothers Merrie Melodies theatrical animated short, featuring the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. It was directed by Chuck Jones.

[edit] Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Wile E. Coyote, as usual, tries various devices to try and trap the Road Runner, all of which backfire. For instance, when he tries to trick the Road Runner into an Acme Parcel-making Machine, the result is a neatly-packaged Coyote.

In the cartoon's longest scene, the Coyote scatters some Acme Earthquake Pills on the road, hoping that the Road Runner will mistake them for birdseed. The Road Runner obligingly eats them, but they have no effect as he zooms away. In disgust Coyote swallows an earthquake pill himself, and then even more disgustedly swallows all of the remaining pills. After jumping up and down several times in an attempt to trigger an earthquake, he contemptuously chucks the empty bottle over his shoulder--and immediately leaps after the bottle with bulging eyes to catch it before it shatters in the middle of the road.

Too late, Coyote reads the fine print at the bottom of the bottle's label: "NOT EFFECTIVE ON ROAD RUNNERS".

As he gingerly takes his first step to get out of the middle of the road, the product takes effect on him, causing him to shake, rattle and jerk helplessly across the landscape, getting flattened by a huge boulder and almost falling off a narrow rocky arch in the process.

When the product finally wears off he is so relieved that he steps out without looking where he is going and strides off the edge of a cliff.

[edit] Notes

Hopalong Casualty introduced a change in the scenery as designed by Maurice Noble. The yellow-sky pioneered three years earlier by Zoom and Bored was replaced by a blue sky, and some rock formations became off-white rather than shades of red, but many other characteristics of the Zoom and Bored style, such as sharp rock formations which apparently defy gravity (huge rock slabs supported by tiny pillars) are retained, distinguishing this new style from that of early Road Runner cartoons such as Fast and Furry-ous.

The Earthquake pills scene is included in the Road Runner compilation that ends The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie.