Lickety-Splat

Lickety-Splat is a 1961 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical animated short. It features Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner and was made under the supervision of Chuck Jones.

Plot

Introduction: Wile E. Coyote, standing on the road, pulls out an arrow-shaped sign saying "Coyote" and another saying "Apetitius Giganticus". The Road Runner speeds by with a Beep-beep and ruffles the coyote's fur. Wile flips the signs to read "Road-Runner" and "Fastius Tasty-us", and winds up his legs, followed by his body, and chases the Road Runner. When the Road Runner sees the Coyote chasing him, he taunts him and gears into superspeed. This causes the road to roll up, a tunnel to turn inside-out, and a bridge to be destroyed as he puts his would-be predator far behind. Wile E. stops short of the chasm, panting, and two light bulbs signal his new-found idea.

1. Wile E. prepares himself to chase the Road Runner with his new roller skis, and skis off the plateau down the mountain and onto the road that the Road Runner is dashing over. As the camera cuts separately to Wile and the Road Runner, the bird turns across a U-turn at the end of a cliff, while Wile speeds off. When Wile E. realizes his mistake, he drops the ski poles, and soon slams into the side of another cliff. The Coyote looks up and down, trying to figure out how to escape, until he hears and sees the Road Runner at the top of the cliff. The skis provide a rather convenient "spring" for Wile E., who uses them to get closer and closer to grabbing the Road Runner. Eventually, he grabs within millimeters of his opponent, but unfortunately, the downward force and Wile's weight is too much for the skis to handle this time, and the Coyote suffers gravity.

2. The Road Runner beeps at Wile E. from across the canyon, and the camera pans to the Coyote attempting to shoot himself over the canyon with a bow. Before he can fire himself, the very end of the cliff crumbles and the bow tips over the side. Wile E. flips himself over in the air, but this causes him to bounce up and get his head stuck inside the edge of the cliff. The Coyote initiates a new plan.

3. Wile E. lights a needle-nosed dart bomb and throws it at a target attached to a cactus, exploding all three items. He then gets in a hot air balloon with an artillery of dart bombs. He sees the Road Runner zipping over the road and lights the bombs. Upon lighting, the bombs circle in the air but the last one lands in the Coyote's balloon, blowing it up. He waves at the camera and falls toward the ground, but stops himself by releasing a parachute. Unfortunately, dart #2 blows this up, and Wile E. is left to wave at the camera with an AGAIN sign before he plummets again. A third dart follows him to the ground and explodes.

4. The darts continue to plague Wile E. from this point onwards. Wile E. gives the Road Runner a snack while he awaits with a hammer behind a turn. The Road Runner is heard approaching, but the camera immediately cuts to a fourth dart blowing up the hammer handle and the hammerhead landing on the Coyote's head. The blow causes Wile E.'s eyes to register "TILT!" in the manner of a pinball machine.

4. The Coyote hurls a newly acquired boomerang at the passing Road Runner, but it disappears behind a rock and comes back around with dart #5 attached and approaches him. The boomerang passes the fleeing Coyote and hovers over one spot. Wile stops moving, thinking he has outrun the bomb, but in reality it is right next to him and blows up before he can run away.

5. Wile now attempts a simple gun-in-the-woods trap, but a sixth bomb plugs the barrel and explodes. The camera cuts to a seventh bomb, which blows up under a huge boulder and sends it into the air, adding insult to injury to the Coyote when it flattens him.

6. As the Road Runner traverses another road, the Coyote is shown at the end of a cliff 900 feet in the air, holding an anvil ready to drop. An eighth bomb takes out a third of the cliff's edge, and two more darts pepper the floating end. Wile E. jumps onto the "secure" main cliff, but the entire cliff falls down. The Coyote pulls himself on top of the anvil to avoid getting bonked on the head with it. The anvil smashes through the ground, followed by Wile E. and the floating end of the cliff with the two darts. The Coyote covers his face with his ears to prepare for the worst, but instead of exploding the two darts unfurl into "THE" and "END". Wile E. pokes one eye out at both of them and laughs deeply. (done by an uncredited Paul Lynde).

Censorship

• Most of the scenes where Wile E. uses the needle-nosed dart bombs are cut on ABC, specifically, the following scenes:
  • The dart blowing up the hammer, which lands on Wile E.'s head and causes his eyes to register "Tilt!" as if he were a pinball machine.
  • The dart blowing up a boulder and landing on Wile E.'s head.
  • Wile E.'s boomerang returning to him with a dart bomb attached to it.
  • A dart plugging Wile E.'s rifle.

Music

The music that was used for the opening credits for the cartoon Zip 'N Snort was reused in this cartoon, provided with some zooming sound effects.

External links

• Lickety-Splat at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Lickety-Splat at the Internet Movie Database