Hair-Raising Hare

What a wonderful Bugs Bunny cartoon! Apart from great production values and writing, this movie marks the first appearance of the cute giant orange hairy monster that will later appear in other Warner cartoons.

Bugs is in an old creepy castle when he realizes that the crazy doctor (clearly patterned after Peter Lorre) is trying to kill him for his evil experiments. Bugs fleas and the doctor unleashes his secret weapon--a giant hairy orange monster wearing tennis shoes! He's really awfully cute, though also quite intent on capturing Bugs. Well, Bugs responds by using his cleverness to beat the monster and escape. A wonderful and funny cartoon. It especially excels when it breaks through the fourth wall--and involves the audience!

If you liked this cartoon, try watching WATER, WATER, EVERY HARE (1952)--a follow-up to this movie.

"Peter Lorre" playing an "evil scientist" (that's what it says in neon lights on his hilltop castle!) who has invented a mechanical "rabbit lure" sets out the diabolical hare on Bugs Bunny. The mechanical lure - a beautiful female - quickly lures Bugs to the castle. Bugs grabs her, kisses her madly on the hand and arm, and the machine literally starts spinning and falls apart.

"That's the trouble with some dames," says Bugs. "Kiss them and they fly apart."

Bugs attempts to leave but the scientist won't let him and wants to introduce him to his other "friend." Bugs tries to escape but can't, and then this big furry monster comes out and chases our hero all over the castle. They stop here and there as Bugs pretends to be a lampshade, pretends to be a manicurist (and does the monster's nails with a hilarious impression of a manicurist), pretends to be a painting on the wall and assorted other bizarre things....all making it a very entertaining cartoon.

The ending of this was really clever with Bugs talking to the audience in the movie theater!

Bugs Bunny thinks he's being watched. Is the bunny getting paranoid in his old age? Nope, because as we see, someone IS watching him, an Evil Scientist. The scientist uses a robotic female rabbit to lure Bugs into his castle. Once there the robot self-destructs as Bugs kisses it. Then the evil scientist lets Gossamer, the hair monster to catch the wasscily rabbit. That's when the fun starts. For some reason this short didn't tickle my fancy as much as others that I've seen with Gossamer in them. Not to say this one isn't worth seeing, as it most definitely is.This cartoon is on Disk 3 of the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1" It also has an optional commentary

My Grade: B

Bugs Bunny is enticed out of his home by a mechanical girl robot, which he then follows into the castle of a mad scientist. Trapped in the castle, the scientist lets his monster out to feed, leading to a chase around the castle.

Just before I watched this short I had the pleasure of seeing `Birth of A Notion'. Both cartoons have a character based on actor Peter Lorre. `Birth' has great animation whereas here that character is awful and the voice work is poor too. This is one example of it, but the animation here is quite poor – Bugs looks basic and the monster itself is about as easy to draw a creation as you could imagine! Happily this doesn't feed through the whole cartoon in a bad way. The material is better than the animation and it is actually quite funny.

Bugs may look average but he does his usual stuff well here. The scientist character is poor and is happily not used very well, but the monster needed to be good and, sadly, isn't at all. It's just like having a ginger haystack in the movie – and it's never given more personality than that either!

Overall this cartoon lacks imagination and spark. It's lack of real quality can be best seen in the animation but happily it doesn't ruin the whole thing. It may only be average but it is still Bugs Bunny and it is still pretty amusing.

The most astonishing and visually audacious of the early Bugs Bunnies, a Chuck Jones masterpiece, that uses the cheap target of the Universal horror movie, long since wallowing in parody, to create some extraordinary effects. The tale is the usual - Bugs being chased by a relentless predator; but is given added piquancy by the horror setting. Bugs is often at the root of his own troubles, whether by arrogant egocentricity, disarming androgyny or slippery playfulness goading the less gifted into violence; but in this case it is Bugs' lust that does him in, as he is led to a castle, with 'Evil Scientist' blaring in neon over its portals, by a beautiful mechanical doll, unsurprisingly, considering our hero's narcissism, very similar to himself (what do you mean all rabbits look the same?!). This mixture of the erotic and the machine prefigures Ballard and Cronenburg, of course, but also reaches back to modern horror's roots, the perverse tales of E.T.A. Hoffman.

The evil scientist, supposedly a take on Peter Lorre, lures Bugs as pet-food for his fearsome monster, who turns out to be a rather cute carpet beast, a dim-witted giant Bugs makes rather heavy weather of. The variations on the chase are vertiginously invigorating, Jones' art is at the zenith of its inventiveness, mocking the horror genre, yet managing to evoke its resonances and themes. In possibly the greatest sequence in Warners animation, the Monster chases Bugs and sees the long hall he occupies reflected the mirror. He also sees himself - his reflection is horrified by him, and runs away out the reflected hall door. This sequence is, er, mirrored, by a later scene, when Bugs, about to be eaten, reveals the watching audience to the Monster, who, exposed, flees through the never-ending castle walls in shame and terror.

This theme of the doppelganger, the shameful double that usually represents all the dark side of our natures we have repressed, is also brilliantly represented in the short's treatment of surveillance. Our first image is of Bugs emerging from his hole, so powerful that the entire forest is his bedroom. and yet he is afraid that he is being watched. Suddenly, he is framed by a screen, which startles the audience (well, me anyway) into a guilty realisation of what it is doing; when the screen belongs to the evil scientist, and the audience is linked to his madman who seeks to murder Bugs, the act of looking, spying, is linked to death - Bugs is in danger as long as he is trapped in the frame, as long as he is being watched. Freedom only is possible when he leaves, and the short is over; but this is a kind of death anyway, as Bugs is a cartoon character who only exists in a cartoon. (Do I need to mention McCarthy?)

The dark colours are beautiful; the playing with perspectives ingenious; and the excuse for a 'What's Up Doc?' is as ingenious as Hitchcock's cameo in 'Lifeboat'.