This is a hard short to review. I have to remind myself that nobody had seen anything quite like this 70 years ago. Still, taking that into account, I would say that 'Porky's Duck Hunt' is more important than it is good. Judging by the average on imdb, nost animation fans disagree.

It was 1937. Tex Avery was still five years from quitting Warner, and the studio was starting to make the move away from the more traditional cute shorts that tended to permeate the output of 30's animation studios, to their own screwball, more radical style. This is the first short to feature Daffy Duck, playing a secondary character to Porky Pig (this would start to change pretty soon, with Porky being mostly relegated to the supporting parts). He doesn't look much like Chuck Jones' Daffy of the 50's. In fact he basically looks like a normal duck, only slightly anthropomorphised, and to be honest I can't remember whether we even hear his name mentioned - but this is definitely Daffy, showing off the trademark insane behaviour of his early period (Tex Avery would direct two more Daffy shorts, both in colour, but Daffy's lunacy would probably reach it's pinnacle after that under Bob Clampett, in the late 30's)

Porky loads up to go hunting and heads off (after shooting his upstairs neighbour in the butt, through the ceiling). From the outcome it's obvious that Porky hasn't much of a clue what he's going. Daffy makes his first appearance when he lands amongst a bunch of decoys Porky has floated. From then on everything goes wrong for Porky, and we get a procession of gags - some good, some ok, and some pretty weak (the drunken fish rowing along singing 'Moonlight Bay' is pretty cringe-worthy and goes far too long).

Something becomes clear even at this early point. Even though this is a very early example of the hunting story which would become such a staple for Warner, it isn't quite as straightforward as it would be if Elmer were hunting Bugs, for instance. It's not so strongly 'prey defeats hunter', because even though Porky loses, Daffy actually seems to let himself get shot on purpose at one stage, and then be retrieved by Porky's dog. Except when they get to shore, Daffy tosses the dog at Porky's feet (a quintessential Tex Avery gesture, if ever there were one). At another point Daffy actually loads Porky's gun for him, and explains it by pointing out that he's basically a lunatic, then goes bouncing and skipping around the lake shouting "woo-hoo!". So to an extent, Porky isn't defeated so much by Daffy's cunning, as by his own inpetness, and Daffy's insanity.

This cartoon is important for a couple of obvious reasons. It was the first Daffy Duck short, and the first time Mel Blanc voiced Porky. But it also marked something of a turning point, or the start of a metamorphosis in Warner's shorts. It was around here that they broke away from safe family-oriented stuff which everyone else was doing, and started introducing manic, daft ideas, ignoring the internal logic of the cartoon, having the author intrude into proceedings, or the characters draw attention to the fact that they were in a cartoon. Within a few years this style would be established, but at this stage you can see it colliding with the old cutesy sort of material (this transition is probably part of the reason Porky stopped being a leading man. He was too normal.)

So this is a very important short, but I still can't say it's a very good one. I'm sure the passage of time has been unkind to it in the same way as say, Snow White (which was released the same year), and this shouldn't detract from its achievement at the time, but as a standalone cartoon today I'm afraid that to me it's of more historical interest than fun.