Hare Brush (1955)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Story by Warren Foster
Animation by Ted Bonnicksen, Art Davis, Gerry Chiniquy
Music by Milt Franklyn
Not unlike last week’s entry “Sahara Hare,” “Hare Brush” gets off to a great start with original humor but strangely falls flat midway through with dull and tired gags.
In this short, Elmer Fudd is reinvented as Elmer J. Fudd, the chief executive of a corporation bearing his name. But Elmer’s behavior is worrying his board of directors – he believes that he is a rabbit. Indeed, his strangely colorless eyes suggests something is wrong with this mental health. The directors resolve to commit him to Fruitcake Sanitarium – which, according to its entry sign, is “full of nuts.”
Elmer, wearing a rabbit costume, is confined to a room with metal bars on the window. Outside of the window, Bugs Bunny walks by nonchalantly. Elmer gets his attention and convinces him to take the bars off the window in exchange for free carrots. Bugs complies and Elmer hops out the window and scampers away. Bugs assumes he is going out for carrots and decides to “keep his bed warm” until he returns.
Meanwhile, the German-accented psychiatrist Dr. Oro Myicin is assigned to treat Elmer’s “rabbitschenia.” He arrives in the room and mistakes Bugs for Elmer. When Bugs resists the doctor’s attempt to cure him of believing he is a rabbit, the doctor gives Bugs a drug that paralyzes his resistance. Bugs is forced to repeat “I am Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire – I own a mansion and a yacht” over and over until the doctor pronounces him cured.
Up until this point, “Hare Brush” is strikingly original with its funny-nasty jabs at psychiatry and its positioning of Elmer in a boldly new characterization. Unfortunately, the cartoon shifts gears when Bugs leaves the sanitarium believing he is Elmer (complete with Elmer’s speech impediment) and he decides to go rabbit hunting. From there, the film devolves into the same plot as the 1943 short “The Hare-Brained Hypnotist,” with Bugs and Elmer changing roles as predator and prey. The film also reaches back to “Hare Remover” (1946) to bring in a bear as a disruptive force in the romp. Unfortunately, the gags in this part of the film are sluggishly paced and utterly predictable – it feels like a completely different film was grafted on the freshly original first half.
And the twist ending that explains why Elmer suddenly developed “rabbitschenia” – a federal agent unexpectedly arrives to arrest Bugs-as-Elmer for tax evasion – isn’t that funny, although it offers a rare case of Elmer triumphing over Bugs at the cartoon’s close.
Oh, listen carefully to Elmer in the first scene and there is a mistake in Mel Blanc’s line readings – this might be only time that Elmer says “rabbit” instead of “wabbit.”