You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Warner Bros. films’ category.
Director:Friz Freleng
Release Date: June 12, 1948
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
Bugs Bunny dares to resist Yosemite Sam in this Western entry, which is both delightfully classic and totally absurd.
For example, when Yosemite Sam exclaims that ‘The town is not big enough for the two of us’, Bugs responds by building an enormous block of skyscrapers in a few seconds! Its finale, too, is hilarious. When Bugs tries to board an unwilling Sam on a train leaving town, they discover this train’s going to Miami and is full of dames in bathing suits. Then they both want to board it! Needless to say our hero wins the day.
‘Bugs Bunny Rides Again’ is a brilliantly hilarious cartoon full of great and flexible animation, and undoubtedly one of Bugs Bunny’s finest entries. The short reuses some footage of a dancing Bugs from ‘Stage Door Cartoon‘ (1944).
Watch ‘Bugs Bunny Rides Again’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://ulozto.net/live/xvYBg55/bugs-bunny-bugs-bunny-rides-again-1948-avi
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 50
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Buccaneer Bunny
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Haredevil Hare
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: November 1, 1947
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
In ‘Slick Hare’ Elmer works as a waiter in a restaurant full of celebrities.
Humphrey Bogart (voiced by Dave Barry) is one of the costumers, and he tells Elmer to bring him a rabbit or else… By chance, Elmer discovers Bugs in his kitchen and what follows is a wild chase involving more celebrities, like The Marx Brothers and Carmen Miranda.
‘Slick Hare’ is a hilarious cartoon. Highlights are a well-timed pie throwing sequence and a a great dance routine by Bugs on an irresistible samba, animated with gusto by Gerry Chiniquy. The cartoon contains some more caricatures of Hollywood stars, like Leopold Stokowski, Frank Sinatra and at the end, Bogart’s wife, Lauren Bacall.
Watch ‘Slick Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 45
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Easter Yeggs
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Gorilla My Dreams
Director: Bob Clampett
Release Date: October 5, 1946
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
‘The Big Snooze’ (a pun on the Bacall-Bogart vehicle ‘The Big Sleep’) opens with Elmer quitting after a short chase routine involving a tree trunk on a cliff.
He tears his contract with Warner apart and decides to enter a career of fishing only ‘and no more wabbits!’. When he rests at the riverside, Bugs enters his serene dream to create a nightmare. This involves e.g. nightmare paint, rendering Elmer in Adam’s costume, making a girl out of him, followed by wolves and a great fall, which typically ends the nightmare. At the end Elmer returns to the scene, reassembling the contract and ready for another routine with the tree.
‘The Big Snooze’ is one of those great cartoons that play with their characters as being real stars (others being the Mickey Mouse cartoon ‘Mickey’s Gala Premier’ (1933), the Donald Duck cartoon ‘The Autograph Hound‘ (1939) and ‘You Ought to Be in Pictures’ (1940, starring Porky and Daffy).
The opening scene was taken from Tex Avery’s ‘All This and Rabbit Stew’ (1941), with Elmer replacing the original black caricature. The rest of the film has a disjointed feel, and features weird cuts and odd cinematographic choices. For example, when Elmer tears up the contract, this is shown in five different shots, following each other in rapid succession: 1) a medium shot of Elmer tearing up the contract, 2) a close-up of only his hands tearing, 3) a close-up of the paper snippets flying into the air above Elmer’s head, who’s hardly seen in this shot, 4) a very strange perspective shot of Elmer smashing the contract into the camera, and 5) a close-up of his boots stamping on what remains of the paper.
Another noteworthy scene is when Bugs Bunny is ‘multiplying’: in this scene Elmer is the only traditionally looking character, placed on a black canvas, overrun by rabbits, only drawn in red, yellow and pink outlines and mixing with the green outlines of some plants. This short scene is a startling piece of early cartoon modernism, and looks forward to the work of the UPA studio in the 1950s. On the other hand, the gag in which Bugs pulls away a hole harks all the way back to the Mickey Mouse cartoon ‘The Picnic‘ (1930).
Bugs sings excerpts from three songs in this short: ‘Beautiful Dreamer’, ‘Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat’ and ‘September in the Rain’.
The Big Snooze’ was to be Bob Clampett’s last cartoon at Warner Bros. He was fired before he could finish it, and the short was completed by Art Davis, who succeeded him as a director. The film’s look and feel is still that of the war era, while contemporary cartoons by Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng show the studio was heading into other directions, with milder humor and more sophisticated designs. In contrast, in ‘The Big Snooze’ Clampett’s animation style is extremely flexible, as usual for him, and his backgrounds are as vague as ever.
‘The Big Snooze’ is a hilarious cartoon that marks the end of an era, where the wildest and the zaniest gags were possible. Only Tex Avery at MGM would continue the extreme style. Bob Clampett left Warner Bros. in May 1945 to join the Screen Gems studio. He was succeeded by Art Davis, who would direct some great cartoons until his unit was closed down in 1949.
In the years following Clampett’s leave, his zany style was continued for a while by his master animator Robert McKimson, who had been promoted to director only a few months earlier. However, McKimson soon toned down both animation and humor, and he would never achieve the same level of originality as Bob Clampett did during his Warner Bros. days.
Watch ‘The Big Snooze’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6n3yac
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 40
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Racketeer Rabbit
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Rhapsody Rabbit
‘The Big Snooze’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Two’
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: August 11, 1945
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
In ‘Hare Conditioned’ Bugs Bunny is working in a display at a department store. But the manager has other plans with him and wants our hero stuffed.
‘Hare Conditioned’ is full of director Chuck Jones’ typical sophisticated humor and extreme posing. For example, at the beginning of the chase scene we can see the manager looking for Bugs in three places. His move from one place to another is done in smears only one frame long, leading to extremely fast takes between the poses. Also, the final chase, involving elevators and stairs, is wonderfully timed. One of the short’s best gags, however, is set to a slower pace, and involves Bugs cross-dressing as a female customer and the manager courting him/her by tickling his/her feet.
Unfortunately, the cartoon ends abruptly with a rather trite ending: when the manager has Bugs Bunny cornered on the roof, Bugs convinces his adversary there’s a monster behind him, with himself posing as the monster, making the manager jump off the roof. But then he looks into the mirror himself…
‘Hare Conditioned’ is one of the great entries in the Bugs Bunny canon. The short clearly establishes Jones’s concept of the rabbit, as the director stated in his book ‘Chuck Amuck’:
“Golden Rule. Bugs must always be provoked. In every film, someone must have designs upon his person: gastronomic, as a trophy, as a good-luck piece (…..), as an unwilling participant in a scientific experiment (laboratory rabbit or outer-space creature). Without such threats Bugs is far too capable a rabbit to evoke the necessary sympathy”.
Indeed, Bugs only comes into action in this cartoon when threatened by death. First he tries to flee his foe, but when this proves impossible he takes control of the situation himself. Only then he does serious harm to his opponent. Nevertheless, Bugs remains calm throughout the cartoon.
Jones kept to his golden rule in the rest of his cartoons, giving Bugs other large or powerful adversaries like a giant red monster in ‘Hair-Rasing Hare’ (1946), a large boxer in ‘Rabbit Punch‘ (1948), or a Martian, capable of blowing up the earth, in ‘Haredevil Hare‘ (1948).
Watch ‘Hare Conditioned’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5y67d2
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 33
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hare Trigger
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hare Tonic
‘Hare Conditioned’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Two’
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: June 28, 1947
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
McKimson’s second Bugs Bunny cartoon is way funnier than his first one, ‘Acrobatty Bunny‘ (1946).
In ‘Easter Yeggs’, Bugs Bunny encounters a lethargic Easter Bunny who makes Bugs replace him, because he has ‘sore feet’. Bugs ends up delivering Easter eggs in some slum, where he’s troubled by an unbelievably annoying little red-haired kid. In his next attempt he encounters Elmer Fudd, who’s only after Easter bunny stew.
Penned by Warren Foster, ‘Easter Yeggs’ is a hilarious cartoon, and without doubt among both Robert McKimson’s and Bugs Bunny’s all time best. Its highlight may be Bugs’ performance as a magician conducting a misguided trick with Elmer’s watch.
Watch ‘Easter Yeggs’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 44
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: A Hare Grows in Manhattan
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Slick Hare
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: May 22, 1947
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘A Hare Grows in Manhattan’ starts with a great premise: Bugs is a Hollywood star who has it made.
He is visited by one “Lola Beverley” (only a voice over) who asks him to tell of his humble origin. Next we watch a youthful Bugs in East-side, New York encountering a group of tough street dogs led by a rather dumb bulldog wearing a bowler hat.
Unfortunately, this section remains an ordinary chase sequence, which does not differ from an ordinary Bugs Bunny cartoon. Three years later, McKimson would reuse the idea of Bugs reminiscing his origins in ‘What’s Up Doc?‘, with much better results.
‘A Hare Grows in Manhattan’ contains a ‘little piggy’ gag which was to be repeated by Tweety in ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit‘ (1988).
Watch ‘A Hare Grows in Manhattan’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zql38
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 43
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Rabbit Transit
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Easter Yeggs
Director: Robert McKimson
Release date: June 29, 1946
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Acrobatty Bunny’ is director Robert McKimson’s first Bugs Bunny cartoon. It’s not his best.
When a circus moves in, it disturbs Bugs Bunny’s quiet home life. When he wants to complain, he encounters a lion and the rest of the cartoon consists of his battle with this animal.
Bugs seems in less control than he normally is and their battle is not very funny. McKimson would bring Bugs back to the circus in the more successful ‘Big Top Bunny‘ (1951).
Watch ‘Acrobatty Bunny’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://ulozto.net/live/x2MQDJj/bugs-bunny-acrobatty-bunny-1946-avi
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 38
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hair-Raising Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Racketeer Rabbit
Director: Frank Tashlin
Release Date: March 23, 1946
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd
Rating: ★★
Review:
In ‘Hare Remover’ Elmer Fudd is an unlikely evil scientist developing a potion to change animals into monsters.
He tries it on a dog, but it only makes it eat grass. Because he has run out of test animals, he has to find a rabbit to try the potion on. Enter Bugs Bunny. What follows is a plot in which both characters think they’ve turned the other into a monster, which happens to be a totally confused bear.
‘Hare Remover’ was to be Frank Tashlin’s last Warner Brothers cartoon and the second of only two Bugs Bunny cartoons directed by him. Unfortunately, it’s not a grand finale.
Despite some great gags and a clever story, the director seems at loss with the two personalities. Elmer, who has a slightly altered design, having suddenly received buck-teeth, is awkward enough as a scientist. But watching Bugs being aghast that he really has made his foe into a monster, and trying to revive Elmer’s former self by making a chemical drink of his own, is just out of character.
In September 1944 Frank Tashlin would leave Warner Brothers, to direct puppet films for the Joan Sutherland studio. Then he left animation all together to work at feature films, first as a gag writer and screen writer, then as a director, in 1951.
Robert McKimson would succeed Frank Tashlin as a director. When Bob Clampett left Warner Brothers, too, in May 1945, the studio had entered a new era. The wild days were over.
Watch ‘Hare Remover’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2uvj6k
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 36
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Baseball Bugs
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hair-Raising Hare
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: March 27, 1948
Stars: Elmer Fudd, Sylvester
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
In ‘Back Alley Oproar’ a sleepy Elmer Fudd is kept awake by Sylvester’s singing in his back alley.
Sylvester turns out to be a rather talented alley cat. His performance is quite infectious, and includes the famous Largo al factotum aria from Gioachino Rossini’s ‘Il barbiero di Seviglia’, Liszt’s second Hungarian Rhapsody (which he performs by stamping with heavy boots on the staircase), “You Never Know Where You’re Goin’ Till You Get There” and “Moonlight Bay”.
At last, Elmer tries to blow Sylvester to smithereens, but they are both killed, and on his way to heaven, Elmer is disturbed by Sylvester’s nine lives singing the Sextet from Gaetano Donizetti’s ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’.
‘Back Alley Oproar’ is one of director Friz Freleng’s cartoons in which he spreads his own love for music. He does so in a very entertaining way.
The cartoon was the first of only four Elmer Fudd-Sylvester pairings. Only Freleng coupled these two characters, although they did co-star in Chuck Jones’ ensemble film ‘The Scarlet Pumpernickel‘ (1950).
Watch an excerpt from ‘Back Alley Oproar’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Bob Clampett
Release Date: January 5, 1946
Stars: Daffy Duck
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Book Revue’ is the last of the book-covers-come-to life cartoons, a series started by Harman and Ising in 1932, with ‘Three’s a Crowd’.
These cartoons, in which the book titles provide the gags, were mostly plotless, relying on puns and sight gags. ‘Book Revue’ is no exception, but it has the most swinging take on the formula one can wish for.
Set in ‘ye olden book shoppe’, ‘Book Revue’ contains caricatures of some famous (white) jazzmen of the era: Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. There’s a scene resembling ‘The Swooner Crooner’ (1944), and foreshadowing ‘Little ‘Tinker’ (1948), in which several female characters swoon as soon as Sinatra starts singing. There’s a strong sense of sex here, as in an earlier scene involving ‘Indian strip’, affecting male characters. This places ‘Book Revue’ at the end of the World War II cartoon trends, for these allusions to sex would soon be discarded.
At a certain point Daffy Duck (jumping from a Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes magazine cover) dresses himself as Danny Kaye (with a blonde wig). He interrupts the swing music to tell about a nonsensical tale of some Russian youth and a girl called Cucaracha. In this sequence Daffy imitates the Russian accent Kaye sometimes would explore. When ‘singing’ cucaracha the background suddenly changes into a startling monochrome red.
This absurd sequence is followed by Daffy singing ‘Carolina in the Morning’. Daffy immediately exchanges the song for some superb scat singing to warn Red Riding Hood for the Wolf. These two sequences form a highlight in Daffy’s career, and a real tour de force from voice actor Mel Blanc. The ‘story’, if there is any, involves Daffy being followed by the wolf from Red Riding Hood. In line with the book-covers-come-to-life tradition several personas from book covers come to help to get rid of the villain, sending the wolf to Dante’s inferno.
The animation of Daffy is extremely flexible in this cartoon, especially when animated by Rod Scribner and Manny Gould, who really push the limits here. At one point Daffy even converts into one big eye – probably the most extreme deformation of a major cartoon star ever put to screen.
‘Book Revue’ makes no sense at all, but it is a cartoon full of sheer joy, and a crowning achievement of the book series.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Book Revue’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Daffy Duck cartoon No. 31
To the previous Daffy Duck cartoon: Nasty Quacks
To the next Daffy Duck cartoon: Baby Bottleneck
‘Book Revue’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Two’ and on the Blu-Ray-set ‘Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 2’
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: December 30, 1944
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
In ‘Stage Door Cartoon’, the forest scene, in which Elmer is “fishing’ for a certain rabbit”, is soon replaced by an urban environment, where Bugs flees into a stage door. From then on, the action takes place in the theater.
The numerous gags involve a great tap dance by Bugs, a spectacular dive by Elmer from a ridiculously high ladder into an “ordinary glass of water” and Elmer watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon. ‘Stage Door Cartoon’ does not make any sense, but it’s full of gags, resulting in one of the funniest of all Bugs Bunny cartoons.
‘Stage Door Cartoon’ also features a Southern Sheriff who looks and sounds like an early version of Yosemite Sam, a Friz Freleng character who would make his debut only four months later.
Watch ‘Stage Door Cartoon’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x301jyk
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 29
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: The Old Grey Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Herr Meets Hare
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: June 12, 1943
Stars: Hubie and Bertie
Rating: ★★½
Review:
The aristo-cat is the pet of a rich lady. He nags the butler so much that the latter quits. Not knowing how to get food himself, the cat panics, until he learns from a book titled ‘the behavior of cats’ that cats eat mice.
He immediately sets out to get one, but when he encounters one (Hubie) he doesn’t recognize it and he’s scared to death. Hubie and Bertie take advantage of the situation to convince the cat that Rover, a vicious bulldog next door, is a mouse. This leads to several chase routines, until it is revealed that it was all a dream.
‘The Aristo-Cat’ is only moderately funny, and the aristo-cat has a rather ugly voice. But the cartoon’s highly stylized backgrounds are beautiful and an attraction on their own. They are based on layouts by John McGrew, who did some innovative work in a couple of Chuck Jones cartoons from 1942 and 1943, e.g. ‘Conrad the Sailor‘, ‘The Dover Boys‘, and ‘Flop Goes The Weasel’. The backgrounds in ‘The Aristo-Cat’ arguably form the apex of McGrew’s art with their expressionistic angles and patterns, supporting the cat’s agony and fear. In fact, such daring designs would not be seen again before the advent of UPA.
‘The Aristo-Cat’ marks the debut of the mischievous mouse duo Hubie and Bertie. Strangely enough, they were shelved for three years, although Hubie had one solo-outing in 1944 with ‘From hand to Mouse’. The duo returned in 1946 to star five more cartoons: ‘Roughly Squeaking’ (1946), ‘House Hunting Mice’ (1948), ‘The Hypo-Chondri-Cat’ (1950), ‘Cheese Chasers’ (1951) and the greatest of them all, ‘Mouse Wreckers‘ (1949).
Watch ‘The Aristo-Cat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: February 14, 1942
Stars: Conrad Cat, Daffy Duck
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Conrad the Sailor’ is the third and last cartoon featuring the early Chuck Jones character Conrad Cat, who also starred ‘Porky’s Cafe’ and ‘The Bird Came C.O.D.’, all from early 1942.
Conrad’s most distinctive trait was his voice, provided by Pinto Colvig, who also voiced Goofy. Indeed, Conrad’s and Goofy’s voices are very similar. However, in ‘Conrad the Sailor’ his voice is rarely heard, as most of the comedy is silent.
In ‘Conrad the Sailor’ Conrad Cat works as a sailor on a battle cruiser (a setting reflecting the war time), where he is nagged by Daffy Duck. Their chase is stopped several times by a small captain who pops up at unexpected moments, a type of gag typical for early Chuck Jones cartoons (see e.g. ‘Inki and the Minah bird’ from 1941 and ‘The Dover Boys‘ from 1942).
‘Conrad the Sailor’ is not a very funny cartoon: neither Conrad nor Daffy behave sympathetically, and the origin of their conflict remains unknown. The Daffy-Conrad-encounters appear to be nothing more than a string of unrelated events. Moreover, Jones’s pacing is still rather slow at times, wearing the comedy down. Conrad’s personality is rather undefined, and after this cartoon he was shelved.
Notwithstanding its weaknesses, the cartoon is noteworthy for its remarkably stylized and surprisingly angled backgrounds, courtesy of lay-out artist John McGrew, who collaborated with Jones on a number of cartoons, before joining the navy himself in 1942. The backgrounds in these cartoons are often the real highlight of the short, and look all the way forward to UPA’s cartoon modern style of the early fifties. McGrew would push the limits even further in ‘The Aristo-Cat‘ (1943).
This is Daffy Duck cartoon No. 12
To the previous Daffy Duck cartoon: The Henpecked Duck
To the next Daffy Duck cartoon: Daffy’s Southern Exposure
‘Conrad the Sailor’ is available on the DVD-set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Four’
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: December 18, 1943
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
In this wacky take on the classic tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, Red Riding Hood is a bespectacled, loud-voiced teenager taking Bugs in her basket to her Grandma, while singing Cole Porter’s ‘The Five O’Clock Whistle’ in her own idiosyncratic way (voiced by Bea Benadaret).
The wolf sends Red Riding Hood on a long and winding road across a mountain, while he takes a shortcut to grandma’s house, which appears to be just two meters away. The wolf doesn’t need to get rid of grandma, who’s “working swing shift at Lockheed’ (a typical war era reference), but oddly enough he has to get rid of some other wolves waiting in bed.
When Red Riding Hood arrives at grandma’s place, the wolf quickly disposes of the unappealing girl, and gets into a chase routine with Bugs, involving a marvelous door sequence, worked out perfectly in Friz Freleng’s typical timing.
However, at several points they’re interrupted by Red Riding Hood, who insists on asking her familiar questions. In the end, Bugs gets so annoyed that he punishes her instead of the wolf.
‘Little Red Riding Rabbit’ is one of the most successful of all fairy tale-inspired cartoons. It’s loaded with funny gags and one of the early highlights in the Bugs Bunny catalog.
Watch ‘Little Red Riding Rabbit’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://ulozto.net/live/xRipWpf/bugs-bunny-little-red-riding-rabbit-1944-avi
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 21
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Falling Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: What’s Cookin’, Doc?
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: October 10, 1942
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘The Hare-Brained Hypnotist’ was only the sixth encounter between Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny, and only the second by Friz Freleng, but already the routine was ripe for experiment.
In ‘The Hare-Brained Hypnotist’, penned by Michael Maltese, Elmer consults a book on hypnosis to catch Bugs. His hypnosis skill work on a bear, which Elmer makes think it’s a canary. It fails on Bugs however, who in turn manages to hypnotize Elmer, making him think he’s a rabbit. Elmer immediately swaps into a Bugs Bunny routine, leaving Bugs to play the straight guy. But after another hypnosis battle down the rabbit hole, Elmer returns to his former self, fleeing into the distance, while Bugs tells us he’s the B19, referring to the Douglas XB19, a huge experimental bomber plane, which had had its first flight on 27 June 1941.
‘The Hare-Brained Hypnotist’ is not a very funny cartoon. The comedy suffers, because Bugs is forced into the role of the straight guy, a problem the cartoon shares with e.g. ‘Tortoise Beats Hare‘ from 1941. Nevertheless, Elmer’s Bugs Bunnyarisms are quite hilarious, especially in a scene where he makes Bugs eat several carrots at one time.
Watch an excerpt from ‘The Hare-Brained Hypnotist’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zqdzr
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 13
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Fresh Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Case of the Missing Hare
Director: Tex Avery
Release Date: March 15, 1941
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Cecil Turtle
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘Tortoise Beats Hare’ starts with one of the greatest openings of all Warner Brothers cartoons: Bugs walks along the title card, reading it aloud, mispronouncing all the names (Fred a-VEry).
When he reads the title, he gets angry, tears the title card apart and immediately looks up Cecil Turtle to make a bet. Cecil Turtle accepts, but when they’ve started off, he phones all his friends and relations to be his duplicate. This trick make the humble turtle seem to appear everywhere, driving Bugs mad.
‘Tortoise Beats Hare’ is Tex Avery’s first Bugs Bunny cartoon after Bugs Bunny’s debut in ‘A Wild Hare‘ (1940). In it Tex Avery immediately does a surprising experiment to his beloved character by letting him play the role of the straight guy. In ‘Tortoise Beats Hare’ it’s the humble Cecil Turtle who gets all Bugs’s routines, like kissing the rabbit at unexpected moments and addressing the audience with a “we do this kind of stuff to him all through the picture”. As Chuck Jones writes in his book ‘Chuck Amuck’:
‘The Tortoise in fact becomes Bugs, and Bugs becomes Elmer Fudd, outwitted and outacted, thereby losing control both of the tortoise-hare race and of the picture itself’.
This experiment is not a success: watching Bugs Bunny being humiliated gives the viewer an uncomfortable feeling, and outside the Cecil Turtle cartoons it was rarely repeated. Nevertheless, Bugs’ first double take is a delight, and so is the animation on the slow hopping Cecil.
”Tortoise Beats Hare’ was only Bugs Bunny’s third screen appearance, and it shows: his design is still somewhat unsteady, and so is his voice. When Bugs addresses Cecil for the first time, it sounds like we hear many Mel Blanc voices after another.
At MGM Avery would reuse the idea of a guy popping up everywhere driving his opponent mad to greater effect, in two Droopy cartoons, ‘Dumb-Hounded‘ (1943) and ‘The Northwest Hounded Police‘ (1946). In both cartoons Avery skips the explanation how the guy could be everywhere, making the result way funnier.
Meanwhile, Cecil Turtle would return in the Bob Clampett cartoon ‘Tortoise wins by a Hare’ (1942) and in the Friz Freleng cartoon ‘Rabbit Transit’ (1947).
Watch ‘Tortoise Beats Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ox5qu
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 3
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Elmer’s Pet Rabbit
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: September 19, 1942
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
‘The Dover Boys’ or, as it is actually called, ‘The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall’, is director Chuck Jones’s first masterpiece.
The short introduces his trademark of extreme poses, which in this cartoon are combined with ‘smear animation’ to unique results.
The extreme posing leads to highly stylized animation, which in itself is hilarious in its unnatural depiction of movement. In ‘The Dover Boys’ we watch both movement through poses, especially in the animation on Dan Backslide, as well as non-movement, with Dora descending the stairs as a prime example. Both techniques are important steps away from the classic squash-and-stretch animation, and from ‘believability through full animation’. Indeed, the animation style of ‘The Dover Boys’ looks forward all the way to the fifties, the era in which stylization of design and animation would flourish and dominate the animation industry. Indeed, the short’s prime animator, Bobe Cannon, would play an important role at UPA, the most influential animation film studio of the fifties.
The subject of ‘The Dover Boys’ is a sophisticated parody on melodrama, consisting of an archetypical story of a villain (called Dan Backslide) kidnapping a damsel in distress (dear Dora), taking her to his cottage in the mountains, where she is rescued by the heroes, in this case, the three Dover Boys, Tom, Dick and Larry.
Or is she? In the final scene they knock each other out, and Dora runs off into a distance with an odd bearded character in a bathing suit, who, as a running gag, hops along rather randomly throughout the picture to the music of ‘The Good Old Summertime’. This character is a relative of the equally mysterious Minah Bird from Chuck Jones’ earlier cartoon ‘Inki and the Lion’ (1941).
‘The Dover Boys’ is both innovative and funny. Its humor is as sophisticated as it is silly. In any case, the gags come fast and plenty, with hilarious nonsense as a result. An all time classic.
Watch ‘The Dover Boys’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: April 10, 1937
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter’ is a cartoon about an evening at the cinema.
It makes very clear that in the 1930s the experience of going to the movies was way more elaborate than nowadays: we watch newsreels, the audience singing to the title song and a feature, ‘The Petrified Florist’, a satire of the Warner Brothers film ‘The Petrified Forest’ (1936), with caricatures of its stars Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. During the cartoon we’re confronted with several movie theater annoyances, like people changing seats, people passing by in the middle of a film, popcorn sellers and bad front row seats.
In this cartoon, Friz Freleng really caught up with the new spirit at Warner Brothers induced by the coming of Tex Avery and Frank Tashlin in 1936. Gone is any resemblance to cuteness or children stars. Instead, there is an annoying duckling asking questions in an irritable voice, and causing havoc in the cinema. There’s no story, just gags, and the film ends rather unexpectedly. But the whole film is a sheer delight, aimed at laughs, and succeeding in it, too. Also featured is an early caricature of Adolf Hitler.
Watch ‘She Was an Acrobat’s Daughter’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/757/she-was-an-acrobats-daughter.html
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: November 11, 1946
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
A very deft Bugs Bunny plays Franz Liszt’s second Hungarian rhapsody on a piano. This classical piece was director Friz Freleng’s all-time favorite, and it appears in several of his films.
In ‘Rhapsody Rabbit’ it is played out full. The cartoon consists of spot gags and it has a small story about Bugs having problems with a mouse. This story element is not well-developed and dropped halfway the cartoon, only to return at the end.
The idea of a battle between the pianist and a mouse was perfected by Hanna & Barbera only five months later in their Tom & Jerry cartoon ‘The Cat Concerto‘, which has exactly the same subject, and which uses exactly the same music by Liszt. Unlike Freleng however, the duo swept the Oscar… There seems to be something fishy about this fact, which is analyzed in detail by Thad Komorowski in his excellent blogpost on the issue.
Compared to the latter cartoon, ‘Rhapsody Rabbit’ is less consistent, but more absurd. The gag in which the mouse makes Bugs play an infectious boogie-woogie may be the highlight of the film.
Watch ‘Rhapsody Rabbit’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.220.ro/desene-animate/Rhapsody-Rabbit/RnRu8v7HIK/
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 41
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: The Big Snooze
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Rabbit Transit
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 