Pre-Hysterical Hare (1958)
Directed by Robert McKimson
Story by Tedd Pierce
Animation by Ted Bonnicksen, Warren Batchelder, Tom Ray, George Grandpré
Music by John Seely
It’s rabbit season and Bugs Bunny tries to evade rifle-toting Elmer Fudd. Bugs balls into an underground cave with prehistoric wall paintings and a giant powder horn that serves as a time capsule from 10,000 BC, with instructions for an opening in 1960 AD. Bugs opens the powder horn and finds a reel of film. Bugs returns to his hole-in-the-ground residence and loads the film into a projector. The film opens with title credits announcing “A Micronesian Film Documentary in Breathtaking Cro-Magnonscope. Color by Neanderthal Color.” To Bugs’ surprise, the film focuses on his prehistoric ancestor, a saber-toothed rabbit, who is being pursued by the caveman Elmer Fuddstone.
It’s strange that it took so long for Bugs to be placed in a prehistoric setting – after all, Daffy Duck ran amok in the Stone Age two decades earlier with “Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur” (1939). But outside of a few seconds of dinosaur footage lifted from the 1950 “Caveman Inki,” the bulk of the prehistoric humor is strictly anchored in the appearances of the saber-toothed rabbit (a scruffy Bugs with oversized front teeth) and the fur-clad Elmer Fuddstone (with hair and a unibrow).
Many animation aficionados have complained that “Pre-Hysterical Hare” is burdened by comic actor Dave Barry’s inept voice performance as Elmer Fudd (Arthur Q. Bryan was ill at the time and unavailable) and the use of stock music by John Seely of Capitol Records from the Hi-Q library (a musician’s strike kept Milt Franklyn off this project). But the real problem comes in Tedd Pierce’s excessively verbose script, particularly with Bugs repeatedly breaking the fourth wall with unfunny asides. Robert McKimson didn’t help by burdening the short with painfully lethargic pacing and by directing Barry to speak his lines in a slow, monotonous recitation. This is the rare Bugs Bunny short where the best thing on the screen is the closing credits.