See Ya Later Gladiator is a 1968 Looney Tunes short directed by Alex Lovy.
Title[]
The title is a play on the 1955 song "See You Later, Alligator".
Plot[]
Janitor Daffy Duck is an assistant to a Mexican scientist who has just built a time machine and gone to take a siesta. The scientist warns that Daffy shouldn't pull the chain when Daffy is curious to play with the machine. However, Daffy hears Speedy Gonzales and his band playing music right outside the laboratory window, which annoys Daffy. Daffy attempts to tell Speedy to scram by throwing a broom at the band, but Speedy blows the broom back at Daffy using his trumpet. As Daffy tries to pursue Speedy, he hatches a plan to send him back in time to be rid of him permanently.
Daffy goes outside towards Speedy and lies that he likes his music and that he has a recording booth available for him. He lures the mouse into the machine and tells him to pull the chain. However, when Speedy tries to pull the chain, it breaks. As Daffy fixes the chain, Speedy blows his trumpet on Daffy, scaring him into accidentally pulling the chain, sending the two into Ancient Rome. A dazed Daffy yells at a passing gladiator by calling him "fathead". However, the gladiator doesn't take kindly to it and promptly throws both of them into the Colosseum. Emperor Nero and the rest of the audience laugh as a lion enters the arena. Daffy and Speedy fight back and forth with the lion using wooden swords and chili peppers until the lion flings them into Nero, breaking his fiddle. "You broke my fiddle; now I'm going to break your neck!" Nero chases the duck and mouse through the streets of Rome. Meanwhile, the scientist wakes up to realize the catastrophe and reverses the time machine to bring Daffy and Speedy back. However, he accidentally brings Nero to the present as well. Nero doesn't know what he's going to do in the present time, so Speedy lets him play fiddle in his band. Daffy is glad that he doesn't have to go through time travel again, but his appeasement is short-lived, as Speedy, Nero, and his band continues to annoy Daffy outside of his room.
Caricatures[]
Goofs[]
- When Daffy looks out a window, the same background is used twice even though the second time that background is used, Daffy is at his own house when looking out the lab window.
Notes[]
- A slightly different arrangement of "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" by Bill Lava appears in this cartoon and in "3 Ring Wing-Ding".
- This was the last cartoon to feature Daffy and Speedy in the Golden Age of Animation. Furthermore, it was the last such cartoon to feature any classic Looney Tunes character in the Golden Age of Animation.
- MeTV aired a previously unreleased restored print of this short on Toon In with Me.
- This cartoon is based on a pitch from Alex Lovy for a series of cartoons called "Time Flies".[1] The aforementioned series would have featured two Colonel Rimfire-esque explorers named Hap and Stance that would use a time traveling machine and travel to the past or future. As one of the first time periods mentioned in the pitch is Ancient Rome, it is assumed that the series was scrapped early in development and was reworked into this cartoon.
Gallery[]
