THE LOW-DOWN: Count Duckula is the story of a vampire duck, resurrected by his loyal servant Igor. A mix-up caused by the Count’s bumbling Nanny results in tomato sauce being used in the resurrection ceremony instead of blood, leading to the Count becoming the world’s first vegetarian vampire. Duckula and his servants travel through time and space in their enchanted castle as the vampire lusts for glory, riches and fun, but they spend most of their time fleeing the vampire hunter Von Goosewing, Duckula’s evil ancestors and pretty much everybody else in history.
I’m quite proud that England’s major contribution to the vampire genre is Count Duckula. Bram Stoker was Irish, Dracula was Transylvanian and Interview With A Vampire was American, but that’s fine – because there’s something so quintessentially English about a vegetarian vampire. Who is a green duck.
The classic cartoon, which aired from the late Eighties to the early Nineties, was one of Cosgrove Hall’s many celebrated animated wonders (DangerMouse and Jamie and the Magic Torch being two others), and remains to this day as one of the most fondly-remembered retro relics, up there with Dib Dabs, Space Raiders and Philip Schofield when he didn’t have old-man face.
The question we post today is – is Count Duckula still as instantly watchable and surreally enjoyable as it was when it flickered on our CITV screens, or is it best left to the past, only emerging nowadays for drunken renditions of its theme song?
First impressions are sound enough – the menu screen is functional but nice – no annoying complicated animations and repeating audio loops here, just a basic, meat and two veg approach (although you do get the theme song playing in the background). Both DVDs have identical menus, each offering you ten episodes of 22 minutes each. Jumping out at you is what isn’t there – there’s a distinct lack of extras, with only optional subtitles keeping the sub-menus warm.
We’re here for the cartoons though, and visually, they’re even better than I remember them (through my rose-tinted glasses, of course). I’ve never seen any cartoon of this age presented with such a bold, clear picture quality, and it really helps bring out the attention to detail and sophistication in its illustration. The show’s imagery gives it the feel of a gothic funhouse, despite its old school ‘dust clouds’ for fight scenes and strangely wobbly camera angles. Plus, even my struggling, out-dated TV, which usually has to be cranked up full blast just so I can hear an average DVD, has no problems pumping out the clear sound on these discs. Looks and sounds like a dream, but enough of this guff – what are the cartoons like?
Although it shouldn’t be taken as a reflection or criticism of the quality of this box set, Count Duckula is completely different to how I remember it. It is a time travel comedy, basing most of its humour on genre parody (‘Dead Eye Duck’ is a switch-up on the Western) or the location that the time-travelling castle ends up in (‘Bombay Duck’, ‘Manhattan Duck’ etc). Call me an idiot, but I don’t remember the time and space travelling being such a core element of the show, remembering instead the scenes set in the castle, which focused on the fun interpersonal difficulties between the three protagonists, and the bizarre sub-plots and non sequitur scenes that dealt with the variety of amusing minor characters. Oh well, I guess nostalgia is not a reliable memory aid.
It is the fact that, when looking back at Count Duckula’s material, the plots and settings look tired and over-clichéd. The parodies are weak and storylines lack a lot of the up-front surrealism of contemporary DangerMouse. Still, the writing is on par, and at points impressive for an old kid’s cartoon. There are some humorous notches on the comedy belt that had this reviewer guffawing at the timing and intelligence of it all. There are a lot of stupid jokes (split up between a lot of stupid characters), but the genius of the one-two exchanges between characters overwhelms some of its overall basic nature.
It was only while researching into this product that I discovered that all is not as it seems – both Series 3 (comprising of 13 episodes) and the shorter Series 4 (7 episodes) are included on these discs. However, this is unannounced on the packaging, which is a huge mistake as there are no other extras on display.
20 episodes might be a bit too much for casual watchers, but for Count Duckula fans, this is essential – it is a huge chunk of episodes to add to their collections, even though it doesn’t add any extras. They’ll rejoice in the clarity of the sound, quality of the picture image, and even the original Thames Television idents that introduce each episode. Pleasantly, in my experience, this package is also great for its originally desired demographic – children. My five year old enjoyed it a lot, revealing that, while a lot of the stories are no longer any good for us, the quality of the quirky show is high enough to keep on entertaining the kids. I didn’t expect this to still be of value to anyone who didn’t grow up with the cartoon on their TV, but it was nice to be proven wrong.