Studio: Leon Schlesinger Productions (Merrie Melodies)
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger
Short Synopsis
Elmer Fudd, in his fat design, is a Mountie in the Canadian snow, out to arrest Bugs Bunny, who is wanted "dead or alive, preferably dead". He lures Bugs's arm out of its burrow with a carrot and gets a handcuff on it; Bugs slips the cuff and replaces his wrist with a bomb, then stands by twirling the keys while Elmer tries every one. The bomb goes off, Elmer, unharmed, declares Bugs guilty, and Bugs insists on a trial, which he conducts himself. Chased across the snow, the two end up with Bugs about to be shot by firing squad; granted a last wish, he sings "I Wish I Was in Dixie", and the film ends with the whole cast, Elmer and the squad included, in a minstrel-show finale, a racist gag that was cut from television prints for decades.
Why It Matters
- The handcuff-and-bomb routine, with Bugs taking his time over the keys, is Freleng and Maltese at their most sadistic and precise, and the Mountie Elmer, bundled in red against the snow, is a good variation on the hunter. The firing-squad ending is a reminder of how the studio's jokes could turn on a dime into material no one would use now.
- Fresh Hare is one of the Warner cartoons whose copyright United Artists failed to renew, which is why it has circulated in cheap prints for decades and why its ending, usually removed by broadcasters, has been seen more widely than those of other Censored-era gags. It is a strong early Bugs cartoon and an awkward one, and both facts are worth recording.
Notes and Trivia
- A Milwaukee station aired the short unedited in 2003 during a public-domain cartoon programme, to viewer complaints.
- The Mountie Elmer reappears in no other cartoon.
- See also: The Wacky Wabbit (1942), Case of the Missing Hare (1942), A Wild Hare (1940).
