Hare Remover

"Hare Remover" is a 1945 Merrie Melodies cartoon starring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, released in 1946. the film was directed By Frank Tashlin without credit; "Hare Remover" ended up being his last Warner Bros. cartoon. The title is another obvious play on "hair", and on patent medicines that had the opposite effect of a "hair tonic" (as with another Bugs title, "Hare Tonic").

ynopsis

Elmer tries his best to make one of those "Jekyll and Hyde potions", but his experiments always end in failure, causing his test animals to run for the hills. He decides to trap a rabbit (Bugs Bunny) as his next subject. After he traps him, Elmer gives Bugs the potion, again with no success. Elmer has a crying fit until Bugs gives him one of the potions, giving Elmer the same initial looney side effects the other animals had experienced. (Bugs comments to the audience, "I think Spencer Tracy did it much better!")

When a bear enters the lab from the nearby forest, both Bugs and Elmer mistake the bear for one another, until they discover that the bear is real. Elmer plays dead to fool the bear, and is saved by his bad odor (just as with "Wabbit Twouble"). Elmer thinks he's safe until he thinks he hears the bear again, but it's Bugs this time, imitating the bear (again, lifted from "Wabbit Twouble"). Meanwhile the bear is standing on the side of the room watching them, convinced that both Elmer and Bugs are crazy, flashing rebus picture cards to the audience showing a screw with a ball, a , a dripping faucet, bats in a belfry, etc.

Notes

*Elmer seldom referred to his perennial co-star by name, but typically only as "that scwewy wabbit" or similar expressions. This cartoon is one of the few in which Elmer actually acknowledges the bunny's name. When he sees the bear munching a carrot and assumes that it's the rabbit transformed by his drug, Elmer cries with delight, "Bugs Bunny!" In the reverse situation, when Bugs mistakes the bear for Elmer, Bugs still calls him, "Doc!" (Coincidentally, in the aforementioned "Hare Tonic", Bugs himself addresses Elmer by name.)

ee also

*Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies filmography (1940-1949)
*Osama Bin Laden Has Farty Pants, the fifth season South Park episode which parodies the rebus card sequence