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" and "I've Been Working on the Railroad". Bugs' Gremlin nemesis also makes a reapearance in the 1990 cartoon Tiny Toons episode Journy to the Center of Acme Acres with two look alikes as the secondary antagonists of the episode.
[edit] Plot synopsis
This cartoon opens with an extended series of "establish" 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, accompanied by "I've Been Working on the Railroad". In response to his "What's up, Doc?" 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, yells in his ear, "IT AIN'T VENDELL VILLKIE!" He 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.
