Hyde and Hare

Hyde and Hare (1955)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Being a major fan of horror movies as well as Bugs, you'd think I'd love this short but in fact I find it to be rather tame. The kind Dr. Jekyll comes to the park everyday to feed Bugs some carrots and one day decides to take him home as a pet. At the house the doctor drinks his potion, which turns him into the monstrous, green skinned Mr. Hyde. This film really doesn't contain too many laughs until the end when Bugs turns into the monster but sadly they don't spend anytime with this joke. Everything before that is decent but nothing really jumps off the screen. I enjoyed the calmness of Dr. Jekyll and I thought the transformation scenes were good but there still weren't enough laughs.

"It's shameful; but it's a living," shrugs Bugs before he goes into his "timid little rabbit routine" so he can get his daily carrot from his "benefactor" at the park. Bugs plays it to the hilt, jumping into the man's arms and suggesting he adopt him as his pet and could feed him in bed every time. The quiet, unassuming little man is thrilled and carries Bugs to his home. The shock is that the man is "Dr. Jekyll!" It turns out both Bugs and "the doc" are not what they seem! This, then, was a two-joke cartoon the first part on the nice old man, the second on Bugs.

I enjoyed the funny bits with Bugs imitating Liberace and then Dr. Jekyll's quick transformations back and forth to Mr. Hyde. That was not overdone, only went for a couple of minutes and was entertaining.

The ending was the only weak part, too predictable and not funny. I still liked this cartoon, which was included in the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 2 DVD.

While the Sylvester and Tweety cartoon 'Hyde and Go Tweet' is the better take on the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, being funnier and more creative, 'Hyde and Hare' is still very entertaining in its own right.

'Hyde and Hare's' chief weak point is the ending. With the exception of Bugs's final line, which is pretty amusing, you can smell it from a mile off, Bugs's Hyde character is rather ugly and not frightening enough and the cartoon would have been two-joke if there was enough done with Bugs in the Hyde guise. Instead the ending scene felt rushed and in comparison to Dr Jekyll as Hyde there was nowhere near enough time dedicated to Bugs as Hyde. This viewer also does somewhat agree that the story is a touch thin and stretched, and also a touch repetitive (always a danger with one-joke cartoons).

On the other hand, the animation (as was the case with most 1950s Looney Tunes cartoons) is very nice, typical Fritz Freleng, and the one element that is- slightly- better than 'Hyde and Go Tweet's', which was still very good but made at a time where the Looney Tunes cartoons' budgets were starting to get lower and animation getting cheaper (though it only started to get bad in the mid-60s with primarily the Daffy and Speedy series and the later Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote shorts. In 'Hyde and Hare' the backgrounds are fluid and colourful, the colours are bright and quite attractive to look at, Bugs and Dr. Jekyll are drawn well and Dr. Jekyll as Hyde this viewer personally found pretty frightening.

Carl Stalling, a consistently great composer and my personal favourite for the Looney Tunes cartoons (like Milt Franklyn's scores a lot too, much less keen on Bill Lava's) provides a characteristically jaunty and characterful music score. It's lushly orchestrated, haunting in places (especially the opening credits) and syncs with the gags excellently and even enhances them (Franklyn was also very good at doing this, Lava's a good deal of the time were cheap-sounding, repetitive and even misplaced).

There are funnier, more creative and less predictable Looney Tunes shorts, sure, but the dialogue is still clever and witty- Bugs bagging all the best lines, particularly the one quoted in the review summary, Dr Jekyll's comparatively is ever so slightly bland and repetitive- and the gags range from amusing to hilarious. 'Hyde and Hare' is paced efficiently and Freleng (one of the more famous and popular Looney Tunes directors, second to Chuck Jones) directs with energy, his directorial and animation style unmistakable. Bugs' distinctive personality shines brilliantly, his energy and actions getting increasingly manic, while Dr Jekyll is a good, understated (if much less funny) contrast, the rapport between the two never coming across as dull, which is good because it is the thing that holds 'Hyde and Hare' together. Mel Blanc's voice work is faultless, once again showing the unparallelled ability to voice more than one character in the same cartoon and give them different and individual personalities to one another.

All in all, very entertaining. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Bugs Bunny here presents himself as a normal, everyday bunny rabbit who is adopted and taken home by the mild-mannered Dr Jekyll.

Once in the house (playing the Minute Waltz by Chopin, no less) Bugs is startled to find himself chased by a green faced monster wielding an axe - Mr Hyde, after Dr Jekyll's transformation. During the chase the monster changes back to the good doctor several times and then back again (usually once the doctor and Bugs are in a locked room, or a cupboard, etc.).

Finally Bugs makes a run for it, but being the rabbit we know and love, and not that normal little bunny, he's taken something he shouldn't ...

'Hyde and Hare' is another hilarious and clever Bugs Bunny cartoon, as we have come to expect. It sends up the Stevenson novella and has echoes of the film versions in the transformation from Jekyll to Hyde. It can be found on the double-feature Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde DVD, alongside the feature films from 1932 and 1941.

Growing up a fan of the classic horror movie monsters, I always enjoyed seeing the Looney Tunes shorts with a horror theme. Whether it was Frankenstein or Dracula or a witch or whatever, it was something I got a kick out of (and still do, really). Here we have a kindly old doctor bringing Bugs home to be his new pet, an arrangement Bugs is surprisingly happy with. The doctor turns out to be Dr. Jekyll, who drinks a potion and turns into the horrible Mr. Hyde. What follows is Bugs trying to escape the monstrous Hyde, while also protecting Jekyll because he doesn't realize they are one and the same. The animation is beautiful. Love the colors and the backgrounds are very nice. Excellent voice work from Mel Blanc. Carl Stalling's music is energetic and fun. It's a funny cartoon with a cool ending and one of my favorite bits of random business in any Bugs short: Bugs doing a bizarre Liberace impression ("I wish my brother George was here.").