Compressed Hare (1961)
Directed by Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble
Story by Dave Detiege
Animation by Bob Bransford, Ken Harris, Richard Thompson, Tom Ray, Harry Love
Music by Milt Franklyn
“Compressed Hare” is one of the stronger Bugs Bunny cartoons to emerge in the early 1960s, with inventive gags and stylish animation that harkened back to the series’ halcyon days in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There is even a sampling of Raymond Scott’s instrumental “Powerhouse” that had been missing from the cartoon soundtracks for too many years.
Wile E. Coyote is back as the predator, with Bugs behaving in character and not in the excessively cutesy manner that marred “To Hare is Human” and “Rabbit’s Feat,” his previous two encounters with the self-proclaimed “super genius.”
Once again, Wile E. is trying to catch Bugs for his meal, only to be constantly outwitted by his prey. After a few elementary endeavors, including a vacuum cleaner and a cannon aimed down Bugs’ subterranean residence, the coyote creates a massive magnet and tries to snare the rabbit with a metallic carrot. The magnet not only fails to attract its designated target, but winds up attracting a bizarre surplus of metallic objects including an ocean liner, space satellites, and a Mercury rocket that explodes the coyote’s cave-residence and sends him into the heavens.
While “Compressed Hare” falls victim to Chuck Jones’ penchant for having his characters constantly breaking the fourth wall, Dave Detiege’s script adds a new dimension by having Bugs and Wile E. one-upping each other with wonderfully bad puns. There are also some inventive visuals, most notably a striking shot of Bugs in foreground silhouette watching an ocean liner get dragged across the Southwestern landscape by Wile E.’s magnet. (See below)
Oddly, the title cards designed to promote “Compressed Hare” feature visuals that are not part of the cartoon: one has Bugs ready to hand a TNT stick to Wile E. as he prepares to ambush Bugs at the entrance of his hole, and the other has the coyote flying awkwardly over a cavern with balloons around his waist while Bugs is at a cliff’s edge ready to pop the unlikely floatation devices. These are also included below – whether they were scenes jettisoned from the final print or just hastily conceived sketches for a quick laugh is not clear.
