Piker’s Peak (1957)
Directed by Friz Freleng
Story by Warren Foster
Music by Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn
Animation by Gerry Chiniquy, Arthur Davis, and Virgil Ross
In a small Swiss village, a competition is announced where a prize of 50,000 kronkites will be given to the first one who can climb the Schmatterhorn mountain. Yosemite Sam, dressed in Alpine mountain-climbing gear rather than his usual cowboy attire, agrees to the challenge. To Sam’s unhappiness, Bugs Bunny decides to try his luck at conquering the Schmatterhorn. Sam engages in outlandish chicanery designed to throw his competitor from the mountain, but inevitably winds up the victim of his deranged schemes
A strictly ho-hum affair, “Piker’s Peak” is burdened with obvious humor and the repetition of a not-funny gag where a brass band prematurely plays a victory tune when Sam comes rolling off the mountain and back into the village square. The film’s denouement where Sam believes he is at the peak of the fog-enclosed mountain but is actually (and inexplicably) atop the Eiffel Tower is among the worst closing jokes in the Bugs Bunny series.
Perhaps the one genuinely funny gag involves a barking St. Bernard that pulls a frozen Sam from beneath an avalanche’s snow drift. The dog takes off a small barrel around its neck, opens it, mixes a cocktail, drinks it, then closes the barrel to run as his barking becomes laced with an inebriate hiccup, leaving Sam in his frozen state.