[2] This movie is notable for being the one and only time that Warner Bros. "loaned out" their famous Looney Tunes characters to appear in a Filmation production (otherwise they were a silent partner).
Daffy Duck is in Hollywood producing a movie about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, starring himself; also appearing in the film are Porky Pig, Petunia Pig (in her first on-screen appearance since the 1930s), Sylvester, Tweety, Wile E. Coyote (without his usual foil the Road Runner), Pepé Le Pew, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, and Charlie Dog.
Frankie, Drac, and Wolfie chase after him, and after a cartoonishly slapstick pursuit they bring (or more rather sneeze) the Phantom and the film back to the hand-drawn animated world.
The transaction also called for production of new theatrical cartoons by Filmation for distribution by Warner Bros. to theaters initially and to television subsequently.
The agreement did not cover network properties to be developed by Filmation, which was represented on CBS with Sabrina and the Groovie Goolies and Archie's Funhouse and on ABC with The Hardy Boys and Will the Real Jerry Lewis Please Sit Down.
[3][4][5] In early November, the trades reported that one of Filmation's co-ventures with Warner Bros. was going to be an ABC television series of the Road Runner, which was unfortunately never produced.
Titles announced were: Treasure Island, Oliver Twist, Cyrano De Bergerac, Swiss Family Robinson, Don Quixote, From the Earth to the Moon, Robin Hood, Noah's Ark, Knights of the Round Table, Arabian Nights, and Jack London's Call of the Wild.
[7] According to Scheimer, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies was the strangest project for Filmation that came from their deal with Warner Bros., who had shut down their animation department in 1969.
They used a lot of the main Looney Tunes characters, except Bugs Bunny (who had not been seen since the closure of the Warner Bros. studio in 1964), Speedy Gonzales and the Road Runner.
The live-action segment was filmed in Westlake Village near Thousand Oaks, and used stop motion, pixilation and undercranking to enable the actors to move like cartoon characters, such as when the Goolies drive imaginary cars down the road and Drac appears to fly.
Menville and Janson had previously used the technique for three short films of their own: Stop Look and Listen, Blaze Glory and Sergeant Swell of the Mounties.
The actors playing the monsters were music producer Ed Fournier as Frankie, musician Emory Gordy Jr. as "Hauntleroy", Dick Monda as Drac, and songwriter Jeffrey Thomas as Wolfie.
[13][14] Michael N. Salda called it "the worst Arthurian cartoon ever" in his book Arthurian Animation: A Study of Cartoon Camelots on Film and Television, stating:Even an all-star cast could not overcome Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies's pedestrian draftsmanship, inconsistent voices, humorless gags, stock music loops, and empty characterization.
Despite the conclusion that shows Daffy proudly accepting an 'Ozzie' for King Arthur and making a speech in which he thanks himself repeatedly as producer, director, star, et cetera, the rest of the world took a dimmer view of Filmation's cartoon.
[17] Despite the aforementioned rights issues, the film remains part of the Groovie Goolies syndication package (split into two half-hours), as of the mid-2000s,[18] and has been rebroadcast several times on television.