His Hare Raising Tale

Bugs strolls down memory lane with his nephew, looking through a scrapbook of past adventures. Yep, it's a clip show folks. As you can probably guess, as Bugs looks through the scrapbook, we get to watch various clips of past cartoons. At least they're good cartoons. The clips used are from Baseball Bugs, Haredevil Hare, Falling Hare, Rabbit Punch, and Stage Door Cartoon. All of the clips are fun and the wraparound segments with the nephew are enjoyable. The nephew would appear in future cartoons and be given the name Clyde. He's cutesy to the point where he's mildly annoying and his eyes are a pale blue which, coupled with his constant slack-jawed stare, gives the impression he might be blind. Anyway, not a short you need to see but if you happen across it, you will be entertained.

This cartoon is what they call a "cheater"-it uses old footage from previously released shorts along with new footage used to frame the clips.

Animation is a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Studios contracted to produce a specific number of shorts in a specific time-frame, most often a year. As budgets got tighter and deadlines loomed, in order to work a bit longer on some shorts to do excellent work, Warner Brothers animators (MGM did so as well) started to do "cheaters", which were quicker and cheaper than a fully new short, to stay on deadline and within the allotted budget for the year. The time and money saved on a cheater was used on other projects, to take a bit longer and do it right. Rather than cut corners on every project, like some studios did, they cut corners on a handful of shorts a year. This is one of the better cheaters. Well worth watching. Recommended.

What makes this one of my two favorites Bugs Bunny cartoons ever (The other is "Rabbit Hood", but, that's another story), is of the use of recycled footage of Bugs Bunny cartoons made in the 1940's. The Technicolor in the "Falling Hare" excerpt is by far superior to those "Public-Domain" prints we seen those days. Not only this 1943 Bob Clampett cartoon is use, but, also of two Chuck Jones Bugs cartoons ("Rabbit Punch', and "Haredevil Hare" [which introduced Marvin Martin to the Looney Tunes gang]} and Freling's own Bugs cartoons ("Stage Door Cartoon" and "Baseball Bugs"). The reason for this cartoon is made, is because very few Bugs Bunny cartoons have been reissued before the Mid-1950's (Surprising enough, the print we see in this cartoon is from a Late-1950's reissue, which by that time, the cartoons that was excepted is under different copyright ownership). Although it's the only Bugs Bunny that use recycled footage, the success of this (Doesn't everyone know that Bugs is still popular today than it was when this cartoon was released?) help proved Warner Bros. to make several more of this concept, until their original cartoon studio closed in 1963. This cartoon, because of its concept, and its star, and of the clever work of Friz Freling, as always, is highly recommended.

'His Hare Raising Tale' is not one of my favourite Looney Tunes cartoons and Bugs has been in cartoons that are wittier, funnier (consistently so that is) and more original, but for what is essentially a clip-show cartoon it is not bad at all.

For a clip-show cartoon, it's very enjoyable and nowhere near as cheap as it could have been even if you do sort of question the point of it. What makes the cartoon enjoyable is the use of footage from 'Baseball Bugs', 'Haredevil Hare', 'Falling Hare', 'Rabbit Punch', and 'Stage Door Cartoon', which is like a trip down memory line for the viewer just as much as it is for Bugs when he is telling the stories to Clyde.

The footage is all wonderfully animated, scored with sumptuous liveliness, range from amusing to hilarious and some with a scary atmosphere like 'Haredevil Hare' and Bugs shines in all of them. The framing scenes between him and Clyde are also of surprisingly good quality, after seeing so many clip-show cartoons (or cheaters as they have been called) where the difference from the links to the cartoons featured is jarring which is not the case here. What does jar a little is the difference of animation styles between Freleng, Jones and Clampett, with Clampett's style being wackier than that of the other two.

Carl Stalling's music shines constantly in every cartoon he scored for, one of those composers that made things even better with not just the quality of the music but how it's used. That's apparent in the footage and in the framing/link scenes, as ever it's high in energy, liveliness, character, lushness and whimsy, and not only is dynamic and fits effortlessly with the action but enhances everything. 'His Hare Raising Tale' is never less than amusing, with the imaginative and often hilarious footage being funnier than the amusing, appealingly nostalgic if occasionally close to saccharine scenes between Bugs and Clyde.

Bugs is immensely likable and true to character throughout and Clyde very nearly avoids all the potential pitfalls that his type of character can have. He is never hilarious but he isn't annoying and is likable enough, but is undermined somewhat by the cartoon trying too hard to make him too cute so that it comes over as cloyingly cutesy. The frame/link scenes are of good quality and are amusing and charming enough, if just lacking the energy, wildness and wit of the footage. Mel Blanc does a characteristically wonderful job with the voices.

In conclusion, very enjoyable, especially for a clip-show cartoon, but not great. 7/10 Bethany Cox