Devil May Hare

Bugs Bunny is doing some housekeeping, vacuuming carrot roots out of his rabbit hole when he peeps his head out and sees a stampede racing by. He finally stops a turtle and asks (after some "What's up doc? queries go unanswered), "What's cookin'?"

The turtle tells him, "The Tasmanian Devil" is on the loose. Who? Bugs looks it up in his dictionary and finds out it is "a strong murderous beast, jaws as powerful as a steel trap - has ravenous appetite," etc etc. (Obviously, this was the first time The Tasmanian Devil appeared in a Bugs Bunny animated short.

Main, the "Devil" wants to devour everything in sight. He's got an appetite like "Baby Huey," but Bugs tricks him every time. In fact, Bugs in kind of sadistic to the newcomer.

Overall, okay but nothing hilarious. Hey, nobody ever said "the Devil" was ever funny.

This is the first of four (or five, if you include a cartoon done in 1979 as part of a special half-hour Christmas cartoon) battles between Bugs and the Tasmanian Devil and in many ways it's the best of them. While Taz is really a one-note character in these and was only in five cartoons between 1954 and 1964, the cartoons are all very good. The ones with Bugs pretty much all revolve around Taz's efforts to have rabbit added to his diet. Mostly sight gags, mainly revolving around food, but Taz has some good lines, particularly in the effort. The ending on this one is very funny. Recommended.

I love the Tasmanian Devil. Isn't he so cute? So what if he eats everything! I found Bugs' tricks rather cruel, after all a Taz Devil has to eat right?

In this cartoon, his first appearance, he comes across Bugs in his usual hunger rampage and wants him for dinner. But Bugs has other ideas and resorts to his old schemes and traps. Standard fare but funny and Taz is wonderfully hug-able. His TV show from the early 90's was terrible but as a character he is great. There are not a lot of Looney Tunes characters with so much potential as their own franchise but Taz is to Warner what Winnie the Pooh is to Disney.

In the Tasmanian Devil's first appearance, he goes after Bugs Bunny, but Bugs is ahead of him, armed with various things (how many people can actually explain what sodium bicarbonate is?). In the pantheon of Bugs's foils, Taz seems like more of a cowboy than Yosemite Sam (he's louder, angrier, less comprehensible, and apparently is the world's biggest glutton). I've always thought that Taz was funny mainly because of what Bugs does to him; if it was just him, his slobbering and growling might get old pretty quickly.

So, this isn't the best cartoon, but still worth seeing. I wonder how many people in real life have seen a Tasmanian Devil.

Definitely not the best of the Looney Tunes canon, but an entertaining one at that. The animation is beautiful and colourful, and the vocal performances as usual are stellar. Also the music is wonderful, and the gags come by thick and fast and are funny. Bugs is still his funny and somewhat arrogant self, and Taz in his debut despite his ravenous appetite is immensely huggable. I did think though that the story was a little on the predictable side, the gags were well done on the whole, but knowing the plot line before watching the cartoon I kind of knew what I had in store. That said, it was a very entertaining short, and works on repeated viewings.

8/10 Bethany Cox