Studio: Leon Schlesinger Productions
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures / The Vitaphone Corporation
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger
Short Synopsis
At a U.S. Army airfield, whose location, men and planes are all marked "Censored", Bugs Bunny lounges on a blockbuster bomb reading a book, Victory Thru Hare Power, and laughs at the idea of gremlins, the little creatures that wreck aircraft. As he laughs, a gremlin appears beside him and starts hitting the tip of the bomb with a mallet. Bugs, absent-mindedly, offers to do it for him, and stops at the last moment, realising what he is about to do. The gremlin vanishes, then comes back and hits him on the foot with a wrench. Bugs chases him, and the gremlin traps him in a bomber and sends it roaring down the runway and into the air. A wild struggle follows in the cockpit and on the wings, with the plane weaving between skyscrapers, and finally it goes into a screaming nosedive towards the ground. At the last moment, just above the earth, it stops dead in mid-air. Bugs and the gremlin turn to the audience and explain: they've run out of gas. As Bugs adds, "You know how it is, with this A card."
Why It Matters
- This is one of the few cartoons in which Bugs is completely outwitted, and Clampett makes his panic hilarious, from the moment he nearly detonates the bomb himself to the stretching, distorted nosedive, animated by Rod Scribner with Clampett's typical rubbery extremes. The gremlin is a perfect foil, a tiny saboteur who never stops smiling.
- It belongs to Warner's wartime cartoons, which turned topical military fears into comedy, and its punchline about the "A card", the lowest petrol ration coupon, speaks directly to an audience living with rationing.
Notes and Trivia
- It was made under the title Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin. Disney was developing a feature based on Roald Dahl's book The Gremlins and asked other studios to avoid the word, so Leon Schlesinger changed the title.
- The book Bugs reads, Victory Thru Hare Power, parodies Disney's Victory Through Air Power (1943).
- See also: A Corny Concerto (1943), Daffy - The Commando (1943).