Studio: Leon Schlesinger Productions (Looney Tunes)
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures, The Vitaphone Corporation
Produced by: Leon Schlesinger
Short Synopsis
Rabbits are eating a cornfield. Porky Pig and his dog Zero arrive to hunt them, and one rabbit, larger and crazier than the rest, a white hare with a Woody Woodpecker laugh, takes them on. He hides in Zero's tree trunk and sends out a decoy, sniffs out Porky's shotgun with pepper so that it shoots the tree down, drinks a bottle of "hare remover" and goes invisible to bop Porky on the head, pops out of a top hat, dodges bullets, bullfights Zero with a cloth, and flies off on a rubber-band plane. Porky, driven to distraction, ends up in hospital, where the rabbit visits him with flowers and then a bomb, and the cartoon ends with the pig in traction and the rabbit still laughing. The rabbit's "Of course you realise this means war" is borrowed from Groucho Marx.
Why It Matters
- This is the first appearance of the character who became Bugs Bunny, here a screwball white rabbit who is essentially Daffy Duck in fur, with Mel Blanc's woodpecker laugh and the Groucho line; it is a remake of Porky's Duck Hunt from the year before, with the duck replaced by a hare, which is exactly how Bugs was born. Hardaway's nickname, Bugs, gave the rabbit his name on a model sheet.
- Warner renewed its copyright in 1966, so despite its reputation as a public domain title it stays protected in the US until the end of 2033. Three more films refined him, Prest-O Change-O, Hare-um Scare-um and Elmer's Candid Camera, before Tex Avery's A Wild Hare in 1940 made him the character the world knows.
Notes and Trivia
- Cal Dalton co-directed but is not credited on the original titles.
- The "hare remover" gag was reused by Freleng in Hare Remover (1946).
- See also: Porky's Duck Hunt (1937), Prest-O Change-O (1939), Hare-um Scare-um (1939), A Wild Hare (1940).
