The Unruly Hare is a 1945 Merrie Melodies short directed by Frank Tashlin.
Title[]
The title is a play on "unruly hair".
Plot[]
Elmer Fudd is a surveyor for a railroad company. As the company builds the railroad, Elmer disturbs Bugs' rest by singing "I've Been Working on the Railroad" a little too loudly, "an unreasonable facsimile" of Frank Sinatra. Bugs proceeds to harass the hapless Elmer.
Elmer's attempts to shoot Bugs in the process ends up in vain. Elmer gets smooched by Bugs' with lipbalm, sprayed with water after mistaking the forest being on fire and running while calling for help, and blown up by smoking too many cigarettes. As Elmer tries to dispatch the log, Bugs asks to see if he can have a look, but Elmer is quick to recover. When Bugs uses a fake head to trick Elmer, Elmer cheers that he finally got Bugs, but he encounters him again when he tries to see from his telescope.
Elmer now has Bugs at gunpoint, the barrel of the shotgun poking his chest. Bugs says, "Only a rat would shoot a guy... (turns around) ...in the back!" After some more taunting, Elmer fires at point blank range, obscuring Bugs in a cloud of gunsmoke. Elmer turns and says, "So I'm a big fat wat!" Bugs suddenly appears through the cloud, unharmed, and effects a Jerry Colonna-like schtick, "Aaah! Have some cheese, rrrat!" and stuffs a large wad of cheese into Elmer's mouth before scampering off.
Elmer finally uses a stick of dynamite to blow up the log. However, Bugs allows Elmer to retrieve the stick, and the two starts to play around with the dynamite stick. Eventually, the stick explodes, and the explosion miraculously lays the ties and the track, followed immediately by an engine in full steam.
Bugs is riding away from Elmer at the back of the train, waving goodbye. He turns with a suddenly startled look, and leaps from the train, crashing and screeching to a halt. He stands up, brushes himself off, and says, "None of us civilians should be doing any unnecessary traveling these days!" He walks off down the tracks with a pole and a knapsack over his shoulder, into the moonlight, accompanied by an instrumental bar of "Kingdom Coming".
Caricatures[]
- Artie Auerbach - "Could be you."
- Joe Besser - "Oh, you and your old gun, you craaazy!"
- Jerry Colonna - "Ahhh, have some cheese, rat!"
Availability[]
Streaming[]
Censorship[]
- On The WB, the part where Elmer has his rifle pointed at Bugs and Bugs tricks him into shooting him with, "Only a rat should shoot a guy in the back" was cut.[3][4]
- Some local stations (and televised prints from the early 1960s) edit out the part where Elmer is looking through his telescope and Bugs puts a pin-up magazine in front of the telescope.
Notes[]
- This was the only Bugs Bunny short in which Frank Tashlin is credited, and one of two Bugs Bunny shorts directed by Frank Tashlin, the other being "Hare Remover".
- Although Bugs did appear in one previous cartoon directed by Frank Tashlin, "Porky Pig's Feat", he only had a cameo role in that short.
- This is the last Bugs Bunny cartoon to have Bugs Bunny mugshot, until 1949, when it would return in "Bowery Bugs" until the studio closure in 1963.
- This is the final cartoon in which Frank Tashlin receive onscreen credit; he is uncredited in his final four cartoons "Behind the Meat-Ball", "Tale of Two Mice", "Nasty Quacks" and "Hare Remover" due to them being released following his official departure from the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio.
- This is also the first and only short in the 1940s where Frank Tashlin is credited in the Merrie Melodies series since "You're an Education".
- The engine on the train is a 4-4-0 (four leading wheels, four driving wheels, and no trailing wheels), commonly known as an American type steam locomotive, due to the great number of them produced in the United States.
- Vitaphone release number: 1306[5]
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ R538954
- ↑ (3 October 2022) Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 2 (in en). BearManor Media, page 122.
- ↑ http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-u-z.aspx
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4gwuWPRU4c
- ↑ https://books.google.com/books/about/Vitaphone_Films.html?id=mmtZAAAAMAAJ