I saw this documentary in a Spanish channel, antena 3, in the 90s. The documentary was about the history of Hanna Barbera, with fragments of shorts and series. The documentary have some parts filmed in live action, in which the person who was talking appeared, but now I’m not entirely sure that this person is the same throughout the documentary. I think the documentary was in the early 90s because they shown a scene of “Jetsons: The Movie”. Perhaps the documentary was made shortly after the premiere of the film or perhaps was to be released in cinemas in a few months.
I remember that in a fragment of this documentary a fragment of an episode of “Blast-Off Buzzard” and a “Its the wolf!” was shown. Later in the documentary they spoke of the superhero series that made Hanna Barbera and the animated Godzilla was shown for a few seconds.
Near the end the person who was speaking was in a warehouse, with shelves full of celluloid tape, containing episodes of Hanna Barbera series.
At the end of the documentary, when the presenter said his last words and was leaving the public, behind him appeared a kind of carnival float or animatronic shaped green monster with horns and glowing eyes. It was coming up to him and swallowed him.
Could it be “A Yabba Dabba Doo Celebration: 50 Years of Hanna Barbera”? In the end of this documentary the green monster appears?
It is most probably the movie, as you think – A Yabba-Dabba-Doo Celebration!: 50 Years of Hanna-Barbera (1989) – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1358673/
If you scroll down the above page, the “User Review” mentions: “We then see Hanna and Barbera examine background paintings for a scene from JETSONS: THE MOVIE (which came out in 1990) and we watch them supervise the recording of a song for the movie by teenage pop star Tiffany, who did the voice in the movie for Judy Jetson.”
Nya, I finally solved this mystery, Cotopaxi.
The documentary I remembered was “Yabba Dabba Doo II: The hall of fame”.
Almost everything I remembered appears in this documentary, except for the making of “The Jetsons: The Movie,” which is logical because the documentary was made in the 1970s.
I think my memory mixed up this documentary with a vhs from the film that probably included a “Making of” at the end (and that “making of” was probably a clip taken from that other documentary).
The documentary apparently doesn’t feature a Godzilla clip, although there is a sequence with clips of many giant monsters. Hanna Barbera made a Godzilla animated series, and I could have sworn that among all those clips, there was one of Hanna Barbera’s Godzilla roaring. Perhaps there is an original version of this documentary with that little clip and a later one without it, to avoid copyright issues with Toho company.
“Yabba Dabba Doo II” is full of oddities, which I think is only natural because it was a strange time for Hanna Barbera. There are many clips from obscure shows and specials, not only the ones that I remembered, like “It’s the wolf!” and “Blast-off Buzzard”, but also “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home” and “The adventures of Robin Hoodnik”, among others. There are even clips from a mysterious show starring lions that was being made at the time of the documentary, which was apparently canceled because the only evidence of that project existing is what appears in this documentary.
Additionally, both the rugby-playing bears who assist the documentary host and the strange giant green monster that eats him at the end are characters from the pilot episode of “The B.B Beagle Show,” a Hanna Barbera show that was canceled after the pilot was poorly received.
The final scene, with the monster ominously appearing behind Bill Bixby, slowly approaching him and suddenly… swallowing him! shocked me greatly as a little girl, and because of that, it was the scene I remembered most clearly.
I never understood why that monster appeared and why it ate this man. I thought maybe it was part of a joke I didn’t understand or was somehow related to the giant monsters in those clips. I can finally rest, more or less understanding the meaning of this. In its original show, the monster ate the character who said “the word of the week.” That was its running gag. Here, the documentary’s host doesn’t seem to say any word of the week, but the constant appearance of the rugby-playing bears foreshadows the monster’s appearance like a punchline. When they made the documentary, they must have assumed that the show would be a success, and people who saw those characters in the documentary would recognize them immediately, just like Scooby-Doo or Yogi Bear. Little did they know they would be forgotten immediately after the pilot and the joke would become a sort of inside joke that only the most die-hard Hanna Barbera fans would understand.
Solved (by the poster)!