Hot Cross Bunny is a 1948 Merrie Melodies short directed by Robert McKimson.
Title[]
The title is a play on the nursery rhyme and food "Hot Cross Buns."
Plot[]
Bugs is "Experimental Rabbit #46" in the Eureka Hospital Experimental Laboratory, a Paul Revere Foundation, which sports the unlikely slogan 'Hardly a man is now alive'. Bugs lives a pampered life, oblivious to the fact that a scientist plans on switching his mind with that of a chicken.
The scientist brings Bugs out to the operating theater, in front of an audience of fellow doctors. Bugs, of course, thinks he's been brought out to perform. He pulls out all the stops, singing, dancing, scatting comedy routines including his impression of Lionel Barrymore, and magic acts. Upon finishing each act, he looks around to see the unimpressed, stern-faced doctors in exactly the same frame position each time. "What a tough audience! It ain't like Saint Joe!" The scientist attempts to retrieve Bugs but is pushed away. He strikes Bugs with a hammer while the rabbit is in the middle of a scat routine, but Bugs quickly revives and, having failed as the entertainment, becomes a vendor instead, selling hot dogs to the scientists, only to be hammered again. Learning the scientist's intentions, Bugs runs and a chase ensues. Bugs hides in a closet, unaware there was a skeleton in there, and comes out scared. Then he makes a run into a lab and mixes together a concoction whilst running from the scientist; after commanding him to stop, he reveals the concoction in his hand and warns him "One more step and I'll blow ya up! This contains manganese, phosphorus, nitrate, lactic acid, and dextrose." which causes the scientist to laugh and dismiss Bugs' threat, telling him "That is the formula for a chocolate malted!" Confused, Bugs drinks the concoction and comments "Yum, Yum! I'm a better scientist than I thought!" Then he hides near an oxygen tent disguised as a Boy Scout and briefly fools the scientist. "That was me good deed for the day!"
Finally, Bugs is rendered helpless with laughing gas and placed on the table. With the metallic mind-switching caps on him and the rather uninterested-looking chicken, the experiment was ready to begin. At the last minute, he somehow cut the wire connecting to his electrode hat and the scientist begins clucking like a chicken, while the chicken with the scientist's mind states in plain English his hope that the experiment can be reversed, "In our next experiment, we will reverse the procedure, I hope." Bugs says, "Looks like Doc is a victim of fowl play!", and then, he laughs.
Caricatures[]
- Lionel Barrymore as Dr. Gillespie
- Danny Kaye
Availability[]
Stars of Space Jam: Bugs Bunny
Japanese Looney Tunes LaserDiscs Bugs Bunny
Special Bumper Collection (Vol. 5)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Two-Disc Special Edition
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Stars of Space Jam: Bugs Bunny
Stars of Space Jam Collection Volume 1
Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection, Disc 1 (restored with original titles)
Streaming[]
Censorship[]
- The ABC version shortened the part near the end where Bugs, the doctor, and the chicken are hooked up to the machine to remove the part where all three of them get an electric shock.[3]
Goofs[]
- When the doctor gets Bugs for an experiment, the doctor's uniform turns blue, then turns back to its original color.
- In the closed captions on Boomerang airings, Bugs' line "You can't send that boy to prison" for some reason shows "the parade's over" instead.
Notes[]
- This is the third cartoon Bugs Bunny tap dances, after "Stage Door Cartoon" and "Bugs Bunny Rides Again".
- Bugs does an impression of Larry Barrymore from the 1942 CBS and NBC comedy-drama radio series Mayor of the Town.
- Bugs' Danny Kaye-esque scat-singing song-and-dance number was previously used in 1946's "Book Revue", but it was performed by Daffy Duck in that cartoon.
- The scene showing Bugs' scat-singing and dancing from this short would later be reused in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode "Prom-ise Her Anything".
- The scientist would later appear, minus the German accent, in the Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries episode, "The Tail End?"
- The working title was "The Rabid Rabbit".[2]
- The setting is the Paul Revere Foundation, with the motto "Hardly a Man is Now Alive", a line from the poem "Paul Revere's Ride" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
- This was the earliest Bugs Bunny cartoon in the WB-owned (post-1948) TV packages as well as the first cartoon directed by Robert McKimson in the post-1948 package.
- The cartoon was reissued in the 1959–60 season, around the same time that the short "Unnatural History" was released, with the original closing replaced. It is the oldest released post-1948 cartoon to be reissued that kept its original titles, but not its opening rings. Most cartoons from 1948 were reissued in the 1957–59 season.
- The original "Bugs Bunny In" title to the cartoon was replaced when it was reissued in the 1959–64 season, due to the Merrie Melodies title being shorter than its normal length. The same thing also happened to the Blue Ribbon reissue titles of "Knights Must Fall", "Rabbit Hood", and "Homeless Hare".
- Along with "You Were Never Duckier" and "The Pest That Came to Dinner", this cartoon was supposed to be in the pre-1948 cartoon package due to production numbers, being before "Haredevil Hare", but since the cartoon was released after July 1948, the cartoon remained in the hands of Warner Bros.
Gallery[]
References[]