Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (1953)
Directed by Charles M. Jones
Story by Michael Maltese
Animation by Ken Harris, Abe Levitow, Richard Thompson, Lloyd Vaughan, Ben Washam
Music by Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn
The final entry in the “Hunting Trilogy” that pits Bugs Bunny against Daffy Duck against Elmer Fudd, “Duck! Rabbit! Duck!” is the weakest of the three films due to joke repetition and an uneven balance among the characters.
This time, the setting is the woodlands in the midst of a snowy winter. It’s duck hunting season and Daffy Duck is tearing down and burning up the signs alerting hunters to the approved prey – an act of self-preservation that he handles while humming Edith Piaf’s “La Vie en Rose” (don’t ask why). Daffy tricks Elmer Fudd into believing it is rabbit hunting season, but Bugs Bunny claims that he can’t be hunted because he’s a fricasseeing rabbit and Elmer lacks the licensing to shoot at that time of prey. Daffy’s short-fuse ignites and he volunteers to create the proper license – but when he can’t spell “fricasseeing” and asks Bugs for help, the rascally rabbit gives him a spelling for a “fricasseeing duck.” Elmer reads the license, looks at the viewer in bafflement while Daffy insists that he carry out to shooting, and then fires point blank into Daffy’s face. Daffy reviews the license, realizes what occurred and sighs, “Well, guess I’m the goat” – at which point Bugs takes out a sign that says “Goat Season Open” and Elmer responds by shooting Daffy again in the face.
So far, so good, except that the cartoon back-pedals into constant variations on the sign gag. When Daffy refers to himself as a dirty skunk, pigeon and mongoose, Bugs abruptly pulls out signs declaring it is the hunting season for each animal and Elmer shoots Daffy in response. “Duck! Rabbit! Duck!” devolves as Daffy’s ultimately collapses into nervous breakdown from constantly being shot at, while Elmer cracks up when he asks a game warden (actually, Bugs in disguise) what hunting season it is. The fake warden says it is baseball season and throws a ball into the snow, which the now-deranged Elmer shoots.
Unlike the earlier “Rabbit Fire” and “Rabbit Seasoning,” most of the humor here is generated by Daffy’s increasingly frantic inability to get the best of Bugs. Elmer is just a dumb foil and Bugs is so beyond his nemeses that there is no fun in seeing him bedevil them into fits of hysteria. Mercifully, director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese knew they exhausted the possibilities of this series and would later focus on Bugs and Daffy as frenemies while only bringing back Elmer for the triangular relation with the uncharacteristic role as a giant in the 1955 “Beanstalk Bunny.”