The Bashful Buzzard (1945) User Reviews (9)

"You little shriveled-up, infinitecimal piece of sh... shoe leather"

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 2 July 2016]

Comparisons to 'Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid' will be inevitable, with Beaky and his mother also in that cartoon and the story being similar here even if the material is different.

This said, 'Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid' is the vastly superior cartoon to me, while it is still funny enough, if rather silly to begin with, the best of the writing in 'The Bashful Buzzard' doesn't come close to the animal bone, "take a shower" and big band dance sequence gags in 'Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid' and the absence of a much stronger character to Beaky and his mother like Bugs is noticeable.

Beaky is still a cute and amusing character, while never being too cloying, overly-dumb or annoying. Making less of an impact is his mother, humour-wise she's bland, she's a bit shrill and also somewhat stereotypical without being particularly funny, endearing or interesting. The story is not quite as engaging this time around, and a stronger character to work against would likely have livened things up.

However the animation is bright in colour, fluid and rich in detail and smooth in movement and design, with some clever and wonderfully wacky visuals still as was characteristic of Bob Clampett. Ever demonstrating why he has always been my personal favourite of the Looney Tunes composers, Carl Stalling provides yet another energetically characterful, beautifully orchestrated and cleverly action-enhancing music score.

'The Bashful Buzzard' does boast some very amusing, without ever being hilarious, dialogue especially "you little shriveled-up, infinitecimal piece of sh... shoe leather". Same with the gags, fun and well animated but there are more hilarious and more inventive around. Mel Blanc's voice work is terrific as always.

Overall, quite good but not great like Clampett often was. 7/10 Bethany Cox

"I wonder where my darling little killer is."

[utgard14 · 7/10 · 5 August 2016]

Beaky Buzzard returns in this enjoyable short from Bob Clampett. Beaky had previously appeared in Clampett's classic Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid. Here, as in that short, Beaky and his brothers are sent out by their mother to capture food. The brothers do so easily but Beaky runs into some trouble. Fun stuff from Clampett but missing the something extra Bugs brought to the table in the previous short. Still there are funny gags and lines throughout, as well as references to Dumbo and The Great Gildersleeve. Beaky may be a minor character in the grand scheme of things but he's impossible to dislike. Good animation, music, and voice work. The last cartoon Kent Rogers did before his untimely death.

THE BASHFUL BUZZARD illustrates the fact that . . .

[oscaralbert · 8/10 · 27 May 2016]

. . . (during the 1900s) scientists believed that the average dinosaur had two heads--one at each end--not unlike Today's earthworms. (Of course, it's not hard to see why Nature made worms with dual heads; can you imagine how much trouble it would be for a one-headed earthworm to backtrack in his tunnel, since this tube would be the exact circumference of the worm who excavated it?) THE BASHFUL BUZZARD is labeled as being red-faced because he blushes when the innocent lambs he picks up turn out to be indecent 14-year-old human girls under their wool whom the Feds are using as "bait" in an Internet sting (this is the Looney Tuners obligatory Prediction for the 21st Century for this particular Warner Bros. animated short). Unwilling to go BACK TO THE FUTURE, the blushing buzzard instead goes WAAAY BACK to JURASSIC PARK, where he meets the two-headed Brontorex. Scientists Today believe that Global Warming is caused by Volkwagon's rigging their emission systems, but THE BASHFUL BUZZARD suggests that 22nd Century Eggheads may attribute it to bovine gases.

Lacking character but still amusing

[bob the moo · 27 February 2004]

An Italian buzzard sends her four boys out to bring home the bacon (or rather, lamb). While her first three boys are tough as nails, her youngest is painfully shy and fairly inept when it comes to catching food. However, this might be the time that he manages to turn it around (with a little help).

The films starts with a seemingly pointless mother buzzard with a thick mama-mia style accent for no real reason and continues through the film with the same lack of cohesion but still a certain amount of humour to it. The film centres on a slightly dopey, bashful little eagle that is trying to match his brothers for hunting ability. The film creates several imaginative moments but really doesn't make much sense. It is quite funny but never hilariously so.

The mama-mia mother is the height of characterisation; both her and the bashful buzzard of the title are based on gimmicks rather than real personalities or characters, but that isn't really the point here.

The film gets sillier as it goes without really getting much funnier. It is amusing and has some imagination but some of the gimmicks are a little daffy and are perhaps a little too goofy to be hilarious.

For the first minute or two, they could have fooled me.

[lee_eisenberg · 7/10 · 11 July 2007]

As "The Bashful Buzzard" started, I thought that it was going to be a shot-for-shot remake of "Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid" for about the first minute. But when it started doing its own thing, I found it an OK cartoon, not great. Why is Beaky Buzzard - or Killer, if you want to call him that - such a lazy ignoramus? Who knows? They have to entertain us somehow.

I certainly liked the sight of Beaky bringing some of those things home. If I'd been that Italian mother of his, I'd have told the father (who probably would have been a godfather) that the son isn't fit for missions.

All in all, worth seeing. Available on YouTube.

What relevance does BASHFUL BUZZARD . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 8/10 · 6 November 2016]

. . . have for 2016, especially when viewed with the "storyboard reel" version of this animated short, anyone visiting this page may well ask. Can it be an uncanny Parable applying to the 2016 American Presidential Election Campaign? Famed Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones has opined elsewhere that the work of Warner Bros.' Brief Cartoon Division MUST be viewed in the political context in which the viewer is living. This requires reviewers to ask themselves, WWCT? (That is, What Would Chuck Think about THE BASHFUL BUZZARD, if he were alive today?) BASHFUL BUZZARD, for we 21st Century Citizens, centers around five brothers, who are easy to recognize as Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump (who are the leading contenders for the Presumptive-Elect Party--sorry, Governor-However-Your-Name-Is-Spelled, of Ohio, who's such a sore loser that he abdicates his duties as Party Host!). These competitive siblings' Mom gives them orders with her thick foreign accent. This makes "Mom" a dead ringer for Melania Trump, the recently crowned Spiritual Mother of Our Entire Republican Party. Since it might strike some viewers as unseemly for a Mother of Five to stuff four of her sons into her cooking pot, Trump's trouncing of Bush, Christie, Cruz, and Rubio during Primary Season is pictured as Ma Buzzard cramming three regularly-sized elephants and one tiny pachyderm (Little Marco, of course) into her cauldron to show how Donald stewed the stodgy GOP Establishment Elephants in Real Life. When Killer (which Melania endearingly pronounces "Keeler") Buzzard gets stung by a bee (doubtless Meghan Kelly), Ma Buzzard (Melania) slaps some sense into Keeler Trump, insisting that he bag bigger game from now on. Soon her Keeler returns to their Homeland with his talons sunk into a hideous, bloated two-faced dragon (Crooked Hillary, it should go without saying).

Very close, but I recommend it

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 23 August 2016]

"The Bashful Buzzard" is a Warner bros cartoon from September 1945, so this one had its 70th anniversary last year and it is from the exact time when World War II ended. The director is prolific filmmaker Robert Clampett and the (voice) cast includes successful (voice) actors Sara Berner and Mel Blanc. It is one of Warner Bros' Merrie Melodies films and frequently they feature characters that don#t show up in other films too often and this is true here. There is a connection to "Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid" from three years earlier, but that's it. Mama Buzzard sends out her kids to get some food on the table, but one of them is just too peaceful and his attempts to catch a baby sheep or even a tiny bumble bee don't turn out very successfully, while his brothers raid an entire zoo. But then, there is the challenge of his lifetime in what initially seems a small turtle. Okay little film that scores more through the story than through comedy and the Italian bird mom is also a nice addition. Voice acting is strong as always, I give this one a cautious thumbs-up. Worth seeing.

Frequent viewers of this animated series . . .

[pixrox1 · 8/10 · 20 August 2021]

. . . know well that about half of these prophetic animated shorts forecast hallmark events in Major League Baseball's Future. THE BASHFUL BUZZARD is a case in point. Doubtless this brief cartoon is predictive of the rise of A Legend from the East (whose difficult-to-pronounce given name approximates "sushi"). Arriving in Detroit with a one-game lead in the standings over the Tigers this week, this visitor from overseas decided to both pitch AND hit for his Angels squad, sort of like the two-headed dragon featured during THE BASHFUL BUZZARD. On August 18 he struck out NINE Bengals, while slamming a 430-foot homer while leading his diamond crew to a crucial 3-1 triumph! Way to forecast, Warner sages!

Funny In Just One Spot

[ccthemovieman-1 · 3/10 · 11 April 2007]

"Beaky Buzzard" was another Looney Tunes effort that never made it past a couple of efforts. This cartoon did offer some laughs, though.

Mama buzzard, complete with a strong, stereotypical Italian accent, sends her four boys out on a mission - get food! Three of them head out in formation and start dive bombing immediately. The fourth is a shy little guy who sounds exactly like Edgar Bergen's ventriloquist character "Mortimer Snurd." He isn't just shy; he's just plain stupid. He's sarcastically called "killer."

The cartoon started stupidly but did get funny when the buzzards started bringing back food to the nest high up in the mountains.What they brought back was astounding - and funny! Unfortunately, the 'toon reverts back to stupid near the end with the little guy inadvertently bringing back a surprise, but it's not really humorous.

I can see why this idea didn't work.