Hare Trigger is a 1945 Merrie Melodies short directed by Friz Freleng.
Title[]
The title is a play on "hair trigger", referring to any weapon or other device with a sensitive trigger.
Plot[]
After "Cheyenne" plays in the train, an old train rolls along through a western desert. Super Chief and his letters are put on the front of Tito the train engine, who passes another train going around a utility pole, and voices repeat "Bread and butter." The train engine whistles "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and ends with a bang before continuing on the tracks.
Bugs is riding in the mail car of a train, singing a nonsense song called "Go Get the Ax" until he heard a bunch of other rabbits hollering "Yoo-Hoo!" Bugs quickly puts on his sunglasses and avoids being seen by his fellow bunnies. When a pint-sized outlaw attempts to rob the train, only to have it pass clear over his head as the engine blows its whistle and nearly runs him over, he then calls for his horse, which he needs a rolling step-stair to mount. He catches up and boards the train and begins to rob it while the mail clerk wraps himself in a package marked DON'T OPEN 'TIL XMAS. The outlaw accidentally throws Bugs Bunny in his sack. Bugs assumes he's Jesse James. The outlaw scoffs and tells him who he actually is: "I'm Yosemite Sam, the meanest, toughest, rip-roarin'-est, Edward Everett Horton-est hombre what ever packed a six-shooter!" Bugs tells Sam that there is another tough guy in the train packing a "seven-shooter", and Sam goes looking for him – unaware that he is actually Bugs in disguise.
As the fight ensues, Sam tells Bugs that he has one second to draw a gun. However, Bugs took it so literally that he quickly sketched a picture of a pistol on a notepad. Sam decided to draw one better, but Bugs says it stinks angering the outlaw into shooting. When Bugs retreated into one of the cars, Sam came across what appears to be a woman who is indecent and screamed in terror causing Sam to shut the door in front of him. But he soon realizes that it was Bugs in disguise. Continuing with his escape, Bugs momentarily came across the club car with the live-action sequence of a western-styled party with "Camptown Races" playing. Bugs says, "Now that's what I call deluxe accommodations!" Then Bugs and Sam get into a gunfight in the other car. Bugs managed to knock Sam's hat off with his two sentient bullets. Then Sam puts Bugs on top of his head assuming he placed his hat back on. Bugs begins fooling Sam by pretending to be the sheriff making Sam shoot around until Bugs pours red ink on top of his head. Believing to have been shot, Sam faints as Bugs plays the guitar singing "O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie." Then Sam finds out that it was actually red ink on his head, glares at him, and asking him passively, "Why did you pour ink on my head?" Bugs rushes off leaving behind some dust shaped like him saying "So long!" Then Sam gives chase to Bugs once again.
After one such skirmish, Bugs tricks Sam into dashing into a lounge car in which a horrific fight is occurring, actually stock film footage of a stereotypical western saloon fight. With the sounds of crashes and bangs in the background, Bugs calmly sings "Sweet Georgia Brown" to himself. Sam emerges tottering, banged and bruised, to a comical instrumental of "Battle Cry of Freedom", and a race-based gag occurs that is subtle enough it is usually left intact in network showings: Bugs effects the stereotyped voice of an African-American train porter, and has the dazed Sam convinced he's supposed to disembark the train, piling him up with luggage; Sam even hands Bugs a silver coin as a tip, and Bugs says, "Thank you, suh!" As Sam steps off the moving train, the mail-drop hook grabs him and temporarily whisks him off the train. Bugs, thinking he has vanquished Sam, yells "So long, screwy, see ya in Saint Louie!" But Sam gets back on board somehow, and he and Bugs fight each other on the roof.
Finally, Sam has Bugs tied up, dangling from a rope, weighted down by an anvil, and fiendishly cutting through the rope, while the train is passing over a gorge. The screen fills with the words the narrator is saying, "Is this the end of Bugs Bunny? Will our hero be dashed to bits on the jagged rocks below?" and so on. Then Bugs walks across the screen, dressed in top hat and tails, carrying a bag full of gold, and dragging the tied-up villain behind him, mocking the on-screen words "Is he to be doomed to utter destruction? Will he be rendered non compos mentis?" Bugs closes by turning to the audience and repeating a popular radio catch-phrase from Red Skelton's "Mean Widdle Kid": "He don't know me vewy well, do he?" as a bar of "Kingdom Coming" plays.
Caricatures[]
Availability[]
Cartoon Moviestars: Bugs Bunny Classics: Special Collector's Edition
Cartoon Moviestars: Bugs Bunny Classics: Special Collector's Edition
Bugs Bunny Collection: Bugs Bunny's Zaniest Toons
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 1, Side 6: Friz Freleng
The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Vol. 6: Friz Freleng
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc 3 (part of 1990 TV special What's Up Doc? A Salute to Bugs Bunny)
Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 6, Disc 1 (with optional audio commentary by Greg Ford)
Looney Tunes Collector's Vault: Volume 1, Disc 2 (restored)
Censorship[]
- When this cartoon aired on The WB, the scene of Bugs and Yosemite Sam shooting six guns at each other on the train was shortened.[3]
Notes[]
- This cartoon marks the first appearance of Yosemite Sam, who appears as a train robber.
- A character similar to Sam previously appeared as the southern sheriff shown in "Stage Door Cartoon" (1944), also directed by Freleng.
- Bugs and Sam would square off again in a western setting, three years later, in "Bugs Bunny Rides Again".
- "So long, screwy, see ya in Saint Louie!" is a line that would be echoed, albeit with slight variations, in "Bugs Bunny Rides Again", "A Feather in His Hare", and "Wild and Woolly Hare".
- The voice Mel Blanc uses for Bugs Bunny in the ending is the same one he used for Tweety, albeit minus the post-production speed-up that was done with Tweety's.
- This is the first Warner Bros. cartoon with full credits. The director's credit is moved to its own card, and for the first time, background and layout artists are credited; finally, the number of animators credited (usually only one or two in pre-1945 shorts) is raised up to four, though some shorts credit five animators.
- Also the first Bugs Bunny cartoon with the "Bugs Bunny In" opening.
- Also the first Bugs Bunny cartoon since "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" to have Bugs on the WB shield, although it is reanimated by Art Davis using Robert McKimson's standard Bugs Bunny design as opposed to Bugs' original 1940 design by Bob Givens. This design would be used until "Half-Fare Hare".
- This is also the first cartoon where the Merrie Melodies theme song "Merrily We Roll Along" was shortened. The rendition would be used until 1955.
- The engines on the train are 4-4-0s (four leading wheels, four driving wheels, and no trailing wheels), commonly known as American type steam locomotives due to the great number of them produced in the United States since the intro only shows Tito being a 2-4-0 engine in the first shot and shows him being now a 4-4-0 engine.
- The live-action footage in this short is taken from Dodge City (1939).
- A photo of this short was featured on the cartoon list pamphlet included with Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection, which otherwise did not include the short.
- The scene of the train tooting "Yankee Doodle" was later reused in "Stupor Duck".
- The "bread and butter" gag was previously used in "A Day at the Zoo".
Gallery[]
References[]