You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Bugs Bunny’ tag.
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: April 19, 1952
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
Six years after ‘Hair-raising Hare’ (1946) Bugs Bunny faces the orange monster in sneakers again.
‘Water, Water Every Hare’ is a horror cartoon featuring almost everything a horror movie should have: an evil scientist, a monster, a mummy and a robot. This story is rather awkwardly framed, however, by a story about the river flooding Bugs’s home and transporting him to and from the castle. Facing the monster Bugs repeats his manicure-tric from the earlier film, although this time he pretends to be a hair dresser. He also makes himself invisible and he makes the monster shrink.
If not as funny as ‘Hair-raising Hare’, ‘Water, Water Every Hare’ is full of clever gags. It moves at a relatively relaxed pace, which only a very confident film maker could use with such effect. In that respect, ‘Water, Water Evey Hare’ shows the mastery director Chuck Jones had achieved. He needn’t be fast and furious to be funny and he knew it.
Watch ‘Water, Water Every Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/7621186/water_water_every_hare_1952/
‘Water, Water Every Hare’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 90
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Foxy Proxy
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hasty Hare
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: May 2, 1953
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
When his home country looks like a desert and he becomes short of carrots, Bugs migrates to Alabama.
Unfortunately, the ‘Mason Dixie Line’, the border between the North (desert) and the South (beautiful green landscape), is protected by Southerner Sam, who isn’t aware that the civil war has ended ages ago. This preposterous idea leads to great gags involving several impersonations by Bugs, a.o. of Abraham Lincoln.
Watch ‘Southern Fried Rabbit’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://archive.org/details/SouthernFriedRabbit_35
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 98
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Upswept Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hare-Trimmed
‘Southern Fried Rabbit’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Four’
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: January 19, 1952
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote
Rating: ★★
Review:
The second appearance of the Coyote after his debut film ‘Fast and Furry-ous‘ (1949) was, surprisingly, not another Road Runner cartoon.
Instead, director Chuck Jones decided to place his still fresh carnivore character against Bugs Bunny, a character increasingly in need of worthy opponents.
in ‘Operation: Rabbit’ Wile E. Coyote gets his name (in the Road Runner cartoons he’s never called that way). Wile E. introduces himself to Bugs as ‘genius’, and suddenly he is a talking character, speaking with an eloquent, vaguely British voice. The experiment is not successful. The coyote’s ability to speak floods the action with a lot of superfluous dialogue, and he almost totally lacks the sympathetic frustration so wonderfully demonstrated in the Road Runner cartoons. Moreover, there’s hardly any chemistry between the two overconfident characters, which leads to remarkably unfunny gags, with only the one involving a flying saucer being able to create a chuckle.
Despite the shortcomings, Jones would make Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote co-star in three more cartoons: ‘To Hare is Human’ (1956), ‘Rabbit’s Feat’ (1960), and ‘Compressed Hare’ (1961). Meanwhile the Coyote would have a much more interesting career in the Road Runner cartoons, with the second one, ‘Beep Beep’, appearing four months after ‘Operation Rabbit’.
Watch ‘Operation: Rabbit’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 87
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Big Top Bunny
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: 14 Carrot Bunny
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: March 10, 1951
Stars: Bugs Bunny, The Crusher
Rating: ★★
Review:
Three years after ‘Rabbit Punch‘ (1948) Bugs Bunny faces the Crusher again.
This time Bugs is the mascot of ‘Ravishing Ronald’, a gay looking ballet dancer type of character with a hair net. This guy challenges the Crusher in a wrestling match, but is clobbered immediately.
In order not to lose his job Bugs Bunny challenges the Crusher, too, as the ‘masked terror’. Of course, he wins the game, by strategy in a rather boring and uninspired cartoon, especially when compared to the delightful ‘Rabbit Punch’. The best gags are in the beginning: the Crusher showing his enormous excess of muscles and the extravagant entry of Ravishing Ronald.
Watch ‘Bunny Hugged’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/82493307/
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 80
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Rabbit Every Monday
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Fair-Haired Hare
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: December 12, 1951
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★
Review:
Five years after his first Bugs Bunny cartoon, ‘Acrobatty Bunny‘ (1946), McKimson returns to the circus setting.
This time Bugs is the new acrobat partner of an egotistical star acrobat bear called Bruno. This “Slobokian bear” is not a good sport and tries to get rid of Bugs, but of course, the reverse happens.
‘Big Top Bunny’ is better than ‘Acrobatty Bunny’, but it still suffers: it’s worn down by the high amount of rather unfunny dialogue and its slow pace. Nevertheless, the cartoon builds up nicely, and its best gags come in last: first there’s a great cycling gag, then there’s a superb gag in which Bugs and Bruno compete in the most daring high diving act. This is quickly followed by the frantic finale in which Bugs disposes of the bear once and for all.
Watch ‘Big Top Bunny’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2fg9zb
‘Big Top Bunny’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 86
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Ballot Box Bunny
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Operation: Rabbit
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: October 6, 1951
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
Sam is running for mayor. One of his election promises is “to rip the country of every last rabbit”. This prompts Bugs to fight Sam with his own weapons, running for mayor, too.
Their election campaigns are far from fair and lead to a string of blackout gags. At one point we watch Bugs imitating Theodore Roosevelt, and there’s a great ant gag, which is accompanied by ridiculously sounding sped-up classical music. But the short’s highlight may be the piano gag, in which Bugs has to play a tune to ignite a bomb. However, Bugs repeatedly plays the wrong note, so Sam plays it for him… In the end of the cartoon the two rivals discover that the citizens have elected a “mare”. This prompts them into playing Russian roulette…
‘Ballot Box Bunny’ is an inspired and funny cartoon, even if it does not belong to either Bugs’s or Freleng’s greatest.
Watch ‘Ballot Box Bunny’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.220.ro/desene-animate/13-Ballot-Box-Bunny/tJrHLV31Kl/
‘Ballot Box Bunny’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 85
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: His Hare Raising Tale
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Big Top Bunny
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: July 8, 1950
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Humphrey Bogart
Rating: ★★½
Review:
Bugs re-encounters the little penguin form ‘Frigid Hare‘ (1949), complete with the top hat and bow tie he gave him in that cartoon.
He promises the tacit little fellow to bring him home, which Bugs thinks is on the South Pole. This leads to a long voyage across the Americas, including Martinique, Panama and the Amazon. At several places they meet Humphrey Bogart begging for some money, a reference to his role in ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’ (1948). This running gag may be the highlight of an otherwise tiresome and unfunny cartoon.
Watch ‘8 Ball Bunny’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 73
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: What’s Up, Doc?
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hillbilly Hare
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: January 21, 1950
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In this cartoon Bugs Bunny apparently lives in Central Park, New York.
He buys a hurdy-gurdy with a monkey in order to become rich. But when the monkey betrays Bugs, Bugs fires him and goes fetching the money at the apartment block himself. The monkey then fetches his big brother (a gorilla) to fix Bugs. But in the end it’s the gorilla who collects money for Bugs.
‘Hurdy-gurdy Hare’ is an inconsistent and rather weak cartoon, which nevertheless contains a great ladder gag, in which Bugs quotes Groucho Marx. At the end, Bugs makes a reference to James Petrillo, leader of the American Federation of Musicians at the time.
Watch ‘Hurdy-gurdy Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.ulozto.net/live/xPiUKTr/bugs-bunny-hurdy-gurdy-hare-1950-avi
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 68
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Rabbit Hood
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Mutiny on the Bunny
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: December 24, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Errol Flynn
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
We’re suddenly in medieval England, where Bugs Bunny tries to “poach” one of the king’s carrots and is arrested by the Sheriff of Nottingham.
This leads to several very funny encounters between Bugs and the Sheriff. The action is at times interrupted by a particularly dopey Little John who repeatedly announces the coming of Robin Hood. When Robin Hood finally does arrive, he appears to be Errol Flynn (live action footage from the 1938 feature ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’ ).
The best gag however, is when Bugs sells the King’s Royal garden to the sheriff as the perfect site to build a house. The poor sheriff only discovers he’s fooled after he has built half the house. It’s gags like these which make ‘Rabbit Hood’ an unassuming and probably underrated highlight in the Bugs Bunny catalog.
Watch ‘Rabbit Hood’ yourself and tell me what you think:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2fe9y1
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 67
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Which is Witch?
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hurdy-gurdy Hare
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: August 6, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★
Review:
Bugs Bunny is at the dog races , where he falls in love with the mechanical bunny leading the dogs.
Bugs disposes of the dogs, having a hard time on number seven. But when he can finally kiss his sweetheart, the results are electrifying!
‘The Greyhounded Hare’ shows some of the flaws that were creeping into the McKimson cartoons around this time: there is a lot of excess animation, especially on Bugs Bunny; but worse, there is a surplus of dialogue, even though Bugs Bunny is the only talking character. Unfortunately, this leads to a cartoon in which the idea is sillier than its execution, despite a short Tex Averyan doubletake and another surprisingly Tex Averyan dynamite gag.
Watch ‘The Grey Hounded Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x19d399_the-grey-hounded-hare_fun
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 63
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Knights Must Fall
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: The Windblown Hare
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: February 26, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
In ‘Mississippi Hare’ Bugs Bunny accidentally ends up at a Mississippi steamer, where he encounters colonel Shuffle, a small moustached Southerner who resembles Friz Freleng’s Yosemite Sam a lot.
Like Yosemite Sam, the colonel keeps taking the plunge, in an excellent series of gags. Bugs Bunny is particularly suave in this cartoon, and so are the backgrounds. But the highlight of the cartoon may be the superb and intoxicating animation of Bugs Bunny dancing with a straw hat.
The colonel would return to the screen the next year in the Charlie Dog cartoon ‘Dog Gone South’.
Watch ‘Mississippi Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2kytjz
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 57
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hare Do
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Rebel Rabbit
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: September 9, 1950
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
In ‘Bunker Hill Bunny’ Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam (as Sam von Schamm, the Hessian) enact the war of independence of 1776 with only the two of them, stuck in two fortresses.
With this simple premise Friz Freleng shows how one can make great comedy out of a very limited setting. The result is a cartoon full of excellent blackout gags, which are simply hilarious because of Friz Freleng’s superb comic timing. Again and again Sam hits the dust. It even contains a gag in which Bugs has no part in Sam’s self-destruction at all!
Watch ‘Bunker Hill Bunny’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=38f_1284015420
‘Bunker Hill Bunny’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 75
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hilbilly Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Bushy Hare
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: August 12, 1950
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
Bugs Bunny is on holiday in the Ozarks, Arkansas, where he meets two dumb and bearded Hillbilly brothers with ridiculously long guns.
When they both chase him, Bugs dresses as a country girl and invites them into a square dance. Soon, Bugs takes the fiddle himself, making the two brothers hurting each other while dancing in a long, catchy and funny square dance sequence.
‘Hillbilly Hare’ is one of McKimson’ all-time best Bugs Bunny cartoons, and certainly his most musical one. Throughout the picture, the animation is delightfully silly and over-the-top.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Hillbilly Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 74
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: 8 Ball Bunny
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Bunker Hill Bunny
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: March 11, 1950
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
In ‘Homeless Hare’ Bugs’s home happens to be in a construction site.
When the excavator driver ignores Bugs’s pleas for leaving his home alone, Bugs nags him until the bully can’t take no more.
This film contains a gag of a half conscious Bugs walking at great heights without falling, a scene that is clearly borrowed from earlier shorts, like the Popeye cartoon ‘A Dream Walking’ from 1934 and the classic Disney short ‘Clock Cleaners’ from 1937. It also contains an elaborate final gag with a hot rivet, a type of gag Chuck Jones invented. It anticipates similar gags in the Road Runner series and Jones’s Tom and Jerry films from the 1960s. The Highlight of the cartoon, however, is a gag with the bully balancing on a plank with a bunch of bricks, which Bugs slowly withdraws…
Watch ‘Homeless Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 70
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Mutiny on the Bunny
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Big House Bunny
Director: Art Davis
Release Date: June 4, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★½
Review:
In the opening scene of ‘Bowery Bugs’ Bugs Bunny is a tour guide talking about Brooklyn Bridge and why Steve Brody (a historical character) jumped from it in 1886.
A flashback shows Steve Brody, pictured as a typical bully, being out of luck and looking for a rabbit foot as a lucky charm. He encounters Bugs who then drives Brody mad, making him jump from Brooklyn Bridge in the end.
‘Bowery Bugs’ was the only Bugs Bunny cartoon directed by Art Davis. He does a fair job, although the cartoon suffers from erratic timing. His designs on Bugs Bunny are very reminiscent of those by Robert McKimson.
Watch a clip from ‘Bowery Bugs’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 60
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: High Diving Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Long-Haired Hare
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: April 9, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★★ ♕
Review:
To his nuisance Bugs Bunny discovers that rabbits (2 cts.) are less worth than foxes ($50) and bears ($75).
He mails himself to Washington, where the game commissioner (“I’m game”) explains to him that rabbits are harmless and therefore worthless for hunters. Bugs decides to be harmful to increase his value. And harmful indeed he gets!
A few of his hilarious actions include painting the obelisk at Washington like a barber’s pole, returning Manhattan to the Indians, cutting off Florida, and filling the grand canyon with sand. He manages to raise the prize on his head to a million dollars, but he ends in Alcatraz prison, too, wondering whether he has carried things too far…
‘Rebel Rabbit’ is full of the zany spirit of the early Warren Foster/Robert McKimson cartoons, and, together with ‘Easter Yeggs‘ (1947) and ‘Hillbilly Hare‘ from a year later, probably the best of all Robert McKimson Bugs Bunny cartoons.
This wonderfully zany cartoon features live army footage.
Watch an excerpt from ‘Rebel Rabbit’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 58
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Mississippi Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: High Diving Hare
Director: Friz Freleng
Release Date: January 15, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
This Bugs Bunny short starts with Elmer Fudd hunting our hero with a “wabbit detector”.
Like Freleng’s quite similar ‘Stage Door Cartoon‘ (1944), the action soon shifts into a theater, with wonderful comedy with Bugs’s and Elmer’s repeatedly passing past sitting people, continuously using the phrases ‘pardon me’ and ‘excuse me’ as a major highlight. Other great gags are Bugs’s playing with the intermission switch (which immediately causes the public to rush outside to smoke) and the finale, in which Bugs manages to get a blinded Elmer into a lion’s beak.
Despite the wonderful comedy, the film nevertheless fails to reach the heights of ‘Stage Door Cartoon’, falling short, due to some bad designs of Elmer and to a sense of routine.
Watch ‘Hare Do’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 56
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: My Bunny Lies over the Sea
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Mississippi Hare
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: July 24, 1948
Stars: Bugs Bunny, Marvin the Martian
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘Haredevil Hare’ Bugs opens with two headlines of the ‘Daily Snooze’: ‘Scientist to Launch First Rocket to the Moon’ and ‘Heroic Rabbit Volunteers to Be First Passenger’.
Cut to Bugs Bunny ‘volunteering’ (he’s literally dragged towards the spaceship by two men). Bugs changes his mind however, when he notices the supply of carrots dumped into the rocket. And so he’s off to the moon.
Bugs has a hard landing on the moon, which destroys his vesssel and leaves him in shock. But just when he’s adjusted to the fact that he’s alone on the moon, Bugs encounters Marvin the Martian (in his first screen appearance) and his green, talking Martian dog, who is designed like a green version of Charlie Dog and who speaks with the dumb voice of Junior Bear, provided by voice actor Stan Freberg.
The two Martians are on the first Mars-Moon expedition and want to blow up the Earth. But it’s Bugs who blows up the two and accidentally half the moon, too. In the end we see the three hanging on the left piece of the moon with bugs screaming to the control room: “Get me outa here!”.
‘Haredevil Hare’ is one of the first science fiction-themed films that flooded the post-war era. It even predates the first post-war live action features set in outer space, ‘Rocketship X-M’ and ‘Destination Moon’ by two years. In the 1950s outer space would become a popular film setting. Indeed, Chuck Jones himself would revisit outer space several times in his cartoons, most notably in ‘Jumpin’ Jupiter‘ (1955), ‘Rocket Squad’ (1956), and the greatest of all science fiction cartoons, ‘Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century‘ (1953).
The latter cartoon also features Marvin the Martian, who would reappear in three more Bugs Bunny cartoons: ‘The Hasty Hare’ (1951), ‘Hare-Way to the Stars’ (1958) and ‘Mad as a Mars Hare’ (1963). Of all cartoon villains, Marvin the Martian is the most extraordinary. He’s as gentle, polite and mild-mannered as he is destructive. Although he would never become a major star, he’s still popular today.
Apart from introducing Marvin, ‘Haredevil Hare’ is a notable cartoon because of some nice and weird animation by Ben Washam of Bugs being a nervous wreck after his voyage to the moon: we watch him changing from one bizarre pose into the other, almost without any animation in between. The scenes inside the rocket scene are reminiscent of Bob Clampett’s ‘Falling Hare’ (1943).
Watch ‘Haredevil Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/661/haredevil-hare.html
‘Haredevil Hare’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 51
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: Bugs Bunny Rides Again
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hot Cross Bunny
Director: Robert McKimson
Release Date: August 27, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
The three pigs sell their straw and wooden houses to Bugs Bunny, because they’ve read in a book what’s going to happen.
The wolf, who’s reading the same book, indeed blows both houses down, to much dismay of Bugs. Bugs revenges by dressing up like Red Riding Hood. This leads to hilarious sequences, including a perfectly executed light and staircase gag. In the end, Bugs helps the wolf blowing the pigs’ brick house down, by blowing it up.
‘The Windblown Hare’ is a nice example of a fairy tale mix-up cartoon, comparable to ‘The Big Bad Wolf‘ (1934), ‘The Bear’s Tale’ (1940) and ‘Swing Shift Cinderella’ (1945). It is hampered a little by large amounts of dialogue, but it still has plenty of silliness to laugh at.
Watch ‘The Windblown Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nfts9
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 64
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: The Grey Hounded Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Frigid Hare
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: October 7, 1949
Stars: Bugs Bunny
Rating: ★★½
Review:
On the way to Miami Beach Bugs misses a left turn at Albuquerque again and reaches the South Pole, where’s confronted with a little penguin chased by an Eskimo, who is as mean as he is out of place. Although Bugs wants to go to the beach, he saves the little fellow.
This is one of the weaker Bugs Bunny cartoons, mainly because of the rather inactive penguin, whose cuteness softens Bugs’s character and because of the large amount of dialogue, provided by Bugs alone. The short’s best scene is when Bugs dresses as a female Eskimo to rescue his waddling little friend. Jones would reuse the little penguin the next year in ‘8 Ball Bunny‘ with moderately better results.
Watch ‘Frigid Hare’ yourself and tell me what you think:
http://www.supercartoons.net/cartoon/663/bugs-bunny-frigid-hare.html
‘Frigid Hare’ is available on the DVD set ‘Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1’
This is Bugs Bunny cartoon No. 65
To the previous Bugs Bunny cartoon: The Windblown Hare
To the next Bugs Bunny cartoon: Which is Witch?
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 