Bugs and Thugs (1954)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Story by Warren Foster
Music by Milt Franklyn
Animation by Manuel Perez, Ken Champin, Virgil Ross, Arthur Davis
Friz Freleng’s “Bugs and Thugs” is a reworking of his 1946 “Racketeer Rabbit” that pitted Bugs Bunny against the bank robbers Rocky and Hugo, which were caricatures of Edward G. Robinson and Peter Lorre. In this 1954 film, the criminals are originals – Rocky, a diminutive, stone-faced tough guy with a cigarette hanging from his lower lip and an outrageously oversized vertical fedora that obscured his eyes, and his large oafish partner Mugsy. Rocky had previously been used in Daffy Duck’s “Golden Yeggs” (1950) and the Sylvester and Tweety “Catty Cornered” (1953) with different (and more competent) oversized sidekicks.
The “Bugs and Thugs” villains are superior to their “Racketeer Rabbit” predecessors. In the first film, the Robinson caricature was hilarious, but the Lorre caricature barely had anything to do and abruptly disappeared without explanation halfway through the story. In “Bugs and Thugs,” Rocky has his hands full with two disruptive forces – the smart-aleck Bugs, who winds up becoming a hostage after mistaking the crooks’ getaway car for a taxi, and Mugsy, whose cheerful idiocy creates major headaches as the story unfolds.
Warren Foster’s story is brilliantly overpacked with inventive sight gags and snappy dialogue that unfurls an exhilarating pace. Among the most remarkable highlights are the surrealism of having Bugs’ phone booth call to the police ending with the officer being pulled through the phone lines and into the road (notice the battered cop’s bare behind in the photo below), the image of Bugs being substituted for a missing front tire (see the above photo), the gangster’s hideout on the edge of a cliff with a back porch with steps that lead directly into the chasm below, and the climax with Bugs tricking his captors into believing the police are coming and hiding them in a stove that he lights and blows up.
“Bugs and Thugs” is also notable as Milt Franklyn’s first screen credit as a composer on a Warner Bros. cartoon, although he was with the studio as an arranger since 1936.
Sadly for Rocky and Mugsy, this was their lightning-in-a-bottle moment. They didn’t show up again until “Bugsy and Mugsy” (1957) and “The Unmentionables” (1963), which were among the worst Bugs Bunny cartoons.
