Falling Hare
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| Falling Hare | |
| Merrie Melodies/Bugs Bunny series | |
 Bugs Bunny and his Gremlin nemesis, in a scene from Falling Hare. |
|
| Directed by | Robert Clampett |
|---|---|
| Story by | Warren Foster |
| Animation by | Robert McKimson Rod Scribner Bill Melendez |
| Voices by | Mel Blanc |
| Music by | Carl W. Stalling |
| Produced by | Leon Schlesinger |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
| Release date | October 30, 1943 (USA) |
| Format | Technicolor, 8 min. (one reel) |
| Language | English |
| IMDb page | |
Falling Hare is a 1943 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Robert Clampett, starring Bugs Bunny. Within the cartoon are several contemporary pop culture references, including to Wendell Wilkie, John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men and the folk songs "Yankee Doodle," "I've Been Working on the Railroad," and the Russian folk song "Dark Eyes." Bugs' Gremlin nemesis also makes a reappearance in the 1990 cartoon Tiny Toons episode Journey to the Center of Acme Acres with two look alikes as the secondary antagonists of the episode. The Gremlin holds the distinction, along with Cecil Turtle, of being one of the very few antagonists to actually and completely outsmart and rattle Bugs.
The cartoon draws on several other "gremlin" cartoons, one of which portrayed Adolf Hitler making a bomb run on Moscow. Certain catch phrases such as "I'm only three years old" were used.
[edit] Plot synopsis
This cartoon opens with an extended series of establishing shots of an Army Air Force base, to the thrilling brassy strains of "We’re In To Win" (a WWII song also sung by Daffy Duck in Scrap Happy Daffy the same year). Bugs is found reclining on a piece of ordnance, idly reading Victory Through Hare Power and laughs uproariously at the book's claim that gremlins wreck American planes with "di-a-bo-LICK-al sab-oh-TAY-gee" (diabolical sabotage). He immediately encounters one, experimentally striking the bomb with a mallet, rhythmically, accompanied by "I've Been Working on the Railroad". In response to his "What's all the hubbub, bub?" the gremlin replies, "These Blockbuster bombs don't go off unless you hit them juuuuuuuust right." Noticing the gremlin's lack of success, Bugs offers to "take a whack at it" but comes to his senses an instant before striking the detonator, screaming "WHAT AM I DOING?!" Bugs asks the audience in sotto voce, "Say, do ya t'ink dat was a... gremlin?" The gremlin, perched on Bugs' shoulder the whole time (see illustration), yells in his ear, "IT AIN'T VENDELL VILLKIE!" Bugs is soon doing battle with the gremlin (and losing) in a flying but unpiloted bomber.
In a finale that brings Chico Marx's speech in A Night at the Opera to mind, the plane on which the two are fighting goes into a tailspin, but runs out of gasoline due to wartime rationing (the punchline of the cartoon is that the plane has only an "A-Card", limiting the bearer to minimal gasoline purchases) and stops about six feet before hitting the ground, hanging in midair.
