Lickety-Splat

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

Wile E. Coyote, standing on the road, pulls out an arrow-shaped sign saying "Coyote" and another saying "Apetitus 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 stops short of the chasm, panting, and two light bulbs signal his new-found idea.

Wile 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 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, 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 plummets to the canyon floor.

The Road Runner beeps at Wile from across the canyon, and the camera pans to Wile 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 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.

Wile lights a needle-nosed dart bomb and throws it at a target attached to a cactus, exploding all three items. Wile grins at the camera, then gets in his balloon with a cadre of identical bombs. He sees the Road Runner zipping over the road and lights the bombs. Upon lighting, the bombs circle in the air until one of them blows up the coyote's balloon. He waves at the camera and falls toward the ground, but stops himself by releasing a parachute. Unfortunately, dart number 2 blows this up, and Wile 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.

Wile 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's eyes to register "TILT!" in the manner of a pinball machine.

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.

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 when it falls on the coyote.

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 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, the floating end of the cliff, and the two darts. Wile's ears cover his face prepared for the worst, and the two darts unfurl into "THE" and "END". Wile pokes one eye out at both of them and laughs deeply.

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 jackhammer, 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.

Credits

*Writer and Director: Chuck Jones
*Co-Director: Abe Levitow
*Animation: Richard Thompson, Bob Bransford, Tom Ray, Ken Harris
*Effects Animation: Harry Love
*Layouts: Maurice Noble
*Assistant Layout: Corny Cole
*Background: Philip DeGuard, Bob Singer
*Voices: Mel Blanc, Paul Julian
*Film Editor: Treg Brown
*Music: Milt Franklyn