Backwoods Bunny (1959)
Directed by Robert McKimson
Story by Tedd Pierce
Animation by Warren Batchelder, Tom Ray, George Grandpré, Ted Bonnicksen
Music by Milt Franklyn
Bugs Bunny accidentally burrows his way into the Ozarks and decides it would be a fine place for a vacation. His arrival is detected by Pappy and Elvis, a father-and-son pair of buzzards. Pappy is a lazy, obese thing with flies swarming around him, while Elvis is a cheerful dimwit. Elvis volunteers to shoot the “eating rabbit” that turned up, but he is too stupid for the task and Bugs repeatedly humiliates him, to the point of tricking Elvis to repeatedly shoot Pappy.
A cartoon that is as dull and indolent as its buzzard antagonists, “Backwoods Bunny” relies too heavily on the stereotype of Southerners as stupid hillbillies for its comedy. An uncredited Daws Butler creates effectively silly voices for the buzzards and some fun is plumbed when Bugs does his drag act again as a hillbilly maiden who turns Elvis into a bashful beau. But the animation is flat and dreary and Robert McKimson’s direction is woefully uninspired. Compared to the 1950 gem “Hillbilly Hare” (1950), this film offered sad evidence about how steeply the Warner Bros. output declined over the decade.
Oddly, this is the third cartoon in a row to use the name “Elvis” as a joke, following “Hare-abian Nights” with “El-Viz Preslii” singing “You Ain’t Nothin’ but a Hound Camel” and “Apes of Wrath” with the gorilla formerly known as Gruesome suddenly renamed Elvis. Did the Warner Bros. animation team really believe the name “Elvis” was that funny?
Elvis and Pappy would turn up for one final appearance in 1960 with “The Dixie Fryer,” a Foghorn Leghorn cartoon that was more spirited than “Backwoods Bunny.” But, then again, anything is funnier than “Backwoods Bunny.”