Transylvania 6-5000 (1963)
Directed by Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble
Story by John Dunn
Animation by Bob Bransford, Tom Ray, Ken Harris, Richard Thompson
Music by Bill Lava
Bugs Bunny is burrowing his way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but winds up in Pittsburghe, Transylvania. After engaging in a brief conversation with a two-headed lady vulture, he ventures to an eerie castle (which he mistakes for a motel) in search of a telephone to call his travel agent. The castle belongs to the vampire Count Bloodcount, who convinces Bugs to spend the night. Unable to sleep, Bugs finds a book of magic phrases and begins to read them aloud, not realizing that he is changing Count Bloodcount into a bat and then back into his human form – always at the worst possible moment.
“Transylvania 6-5000” is notable as Chuck Jones’ final entry in the Bugs Bunny series and his second-to-last Warner Bros. short. The studio fired him when it was discovered he breached his exclusive contract to moonlight on the feature-length animated film “Gay Purr-ee” for UPA – which, strangely, Warner Bros. acquired for distribution.
For his sign-off, Jones (with co-director Maurice Noble and screenwriter John Dunn) created one of the best of the late entries in the Bugs Bunny series with an inventive and laugh-out-loud work that recalls the best output of the series.
Count Bloodcount is a wonderful creation, using his Lugosi-style phrasing to spin comically sinister lines like “Rest is good for the blood.” The climactic duel of magic words between Bugs and the vampire harkens back to the mayhem from the “Hunting Trilogy” cartoons where loaded phrases inevitably bring wreckage to Bugs’ foe – in this case, the use of “Abracadabra” and “Hocus Pocus” that creates abrupt transformations for Count Bloodcount that result in slapstick harm.
Also worth commending here is the visually clever production design, which is eons removed from the flat and dull animation that marred too many of the cartoons of this period. The count’s castle is a riot of horror-comic design, with coffin-shaped doorways, skull-shaped doorknobs, and family portraits of bats hanging upside down from trees. The bookcase where Bugs finds the text on magic phrases has such titles as “Rise and Fall of the Roman Vampire” and “Health and Care of Fangs.” There’s even a rapid cameo of Witch Hazel.
This is the rare Bugs Bunny short where the full cast of voice actors get credit, with Mel Blanc sharing acknowledgments with Ben Frommer (as Count Bloodcount) and Julie Bennett (as the two-headed lady vulture).