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In Honor of Bugs Bunny's 80th Anniversary!
🕑 Added 2020-07-27 16:05:22 +0000 UTC
If you have difficulty playing the Google Drive embed, click here.
So, here’s something special (?) I’ve prepared for Bugs Bunny’s 80th anniversary—an “animator breakdown” of Bob McKimson’s Pre-Hysterical Hare (1958), quite possibly one of the worst Bugs cartoons. It's such a bad cartoon that I can't in good conscience ask Patrons to pay for this...
Besides the odd structure of the cartoon, two different factors plague the cartoon. Dave Barry supplies the voice of Elmer Fudd in this cartoon for unknown reasons, which comes off as a spiritless and unfavorable impersonation. Arthur Q. Bryan voiced Elmer in two subsequent productions, A Mutt in a Rut (McKimson, 1959) and Person to Bunny (Freleng, 1960) before he passed away in November 1959.
The music in the cartoon is credited to John Seely. Due to a musicians’ strike that occurred in 1958, Milt Franklyn left the studio, while Carl Stalling retired from the business indefinitely. Seely was brought in to compile stock music cues from the Capitol Hi-Q library for Pre-Hysterical Hare and five other Warners cartoons.
A line from Bugs in the cartoon is wholly ironic: “It must have been a real stinkeroo to bury it out here in the woods.” In this case, this cartoon is far worse for it to not be included in the upcoming Blu-Ray collection in honor of Bugs’ 80th anniversary.
Enjoy at your own risk…
Comments
Spooky - in jest I asked Jerry Beck if this cartoon was in his 100 Greatest Looney Tunes book just today. Great work as always!
Some nice Batchelder and Ray animation here, but in a cartoon this lousy it's almost beside the point.
