Prince Violent

Prince Violent (later re-issued as Prince Varmint, see "Edited versions and retitling" below) is a 1961 Looney Tunes cartoon starring Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam directed by Friz Freleng and Freleng's longtime layout artist Hawley Pratt.

Plot

The cartoon starts out with Yosemite Sam (here, a Viking named "Sam the Terrible") rowing the sea towards a castle. The villagers spot him and retreat to the castle. Bugs hears the commotion, peeks out of his hole and decides to fight the invader.

While Sam terrorizes the castle, Bugs (dressed in a medieval tunic and a helmet with holes for his ears) begins confronting Sam, calling his outfit a Halloween costume, taking the sword from him and denting it, and ultimately kicking Sam out of the castle. Later Bugs paints a door on the castle walls and Sam mounted on a pink elephant tries to smash the "door" down, but instead knocks into the stone wall where the door was painted. Sam scolds the elephant for failing, but the elephant becomes incensed at Sam and repeatedly slams him to the floor.

Next Sam has the elephant catapulting rocks over the castle walls. Bugs sprinkles pepper on the elephant, making him sneeze and misfire a rock straight into Sam who flies into a wall and gets crushed. Later, with no trace of Sam for some time, Bugs asks for the bridge to be lowered but Sam has not retreated. Mounted on top of his elephant, they charge across the bridge which can't hold their weight; they both fall through into the moat.

Sam then tries sailing in the back way (using the elephant's belly as a boat) to enter via the back. Bugs awaits and plugs the elephant's nose with a cork, forcing him back to land for air, leaving Sam behind in the water. After sailing back to shore in his helmet, Sam furiously dismisses the pink elephant by chasing him away ("AND DON'T COME BACK! I'll handle that Prince Varmint myself!").

Frustrated, Sam tries to dig his way into the castle under one of the towers, but the tower falls on top of him. Next Sam attempts to blow open the castle door with dynamite. When Sam tries to leave, the drawbridge has been raised at the other end and Sam is stranded near the lit explosives. After the door blows open, a tattered Sam rushes into his former elephant who proclaims (in a voice mimicking Joe Besser) that he has defected to Bugs ("I'm on the good guys' side now!") and chases Sam away with a club. With that, Sam gets to his boat and leaves, giving warning to the "double-crossers" that he will be back. As a reward, Bugs pulls out a bag of peanuts and feeds them to the elephant.

The cartoon retitled as "Prince Varmint."

Retitling

This cartoon has been retitled Prince Varmint due to the intimidating title (despite being a pun on the still-running comic strip, Prince Valiant) for TV broadcast versions. The current TV version has the 1960 "Merrie Melodies" BLUE RIBBON opening titles and the 1954 "Looney Tunes" closing title.

See also

• List of Bugs Bunny cartoons
• List of Yosemite Sam cartoons

External links

• Prince Violent on IMDb