Knight-Mare Hare (1955)
Directed by Chuck Jones
Story by Tedd Pierce
Animation by Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Abe Levitow, Richard Thompson
Music by Milt Franklyn
Bugs Bunny is sitting outside of his hole-in-the-ground residence under a hair drying bonnet – as he explains to the viewer, “I just washed my ears and can’t do thing with them.” He is reading a book on medieval times when an apple falls from a tree and bangs on the hair drying bonnet, which falls over Bugs’ head. He suddenly finds himself back in the medieval era where he is assaulted by a knight, a fire-breathing dragon and an aged sorcerer wearing a propeller beanie.
“Knight-Mare Hare” is unusual by having Bugs face three different foes in separate segments, as opposed to handling one or two villains throughout the film. The first foe is the best of the trio, a self-important knight who identifies himself as “Sir O of Kay, Earl of Watercress, Sir Osis of the Liver, Knight of the Garter, and Baron of Wooster-cester-shister-shyster-schuster-shister-sister-shire…sher.” Bugs inquires if the knight knows his regal friends – Duke of Ellington, Count of Basie, Earl of Hines, Cab of Calloway and Satchmo of Armstrong – but the knight rudely dismisses them as “upstarts and rogues.” Bugs and the knight go quickly into a duel, with the knight giving Bugs a sword that is too heavy for him to lift. When the knight charges at Bugs from horseback, Bugs feigns doom by wearing a blindfold while holding a cigarette on his lips. At the last second, Bugs trips the horse, which sends the knight flying into a tower, where he can be heard in a loud, metallic descent down the stairs. (For years, the brief scenes with Bugs and the cigarette were cut from television broadcasts.)
This segment is a triumph of Mel Blanc’s voice performance dexterity and Tedd Pierce’s witty screenplay. But it also throws the film out of whack because the other two segments are too brief to resonate – Bugs instantly extinguishes the dragon’s fire-breathing abilities with a seltzer bottle, reducing the giant lizard to whimpering cowardice, and his fleeting encounter with the weird sorcerer (named Merlin of Monroe!) offers no great challenge. It is a shame that Sir O of Kay wasn’t the central antagonist for the full cartoon.
The film nearly ends on the wrong note with a “it-was-just-a-dream” conclusion, although an unexpected comment by an off-screen character and Bugs’ shocked expression at hearing the comment (see the photo above) closes the short with a happy wrap-up that compensates for its flaws.
The knock-on-the-head time travel gag is borrowed, of course, from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and the seltzer bit at least loosely recalls Twain’s pitting of the modern against the medieval. That book, though, transitions from farcical comedy to epic tragedy, which would hardly do in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Still, the way that Twain’s character eventually takes on the entire Round Table suggests an idea that might have worked here: What if Sir O of Kay were followed by a succession of knights, each requiring more ingenuity from Bugs (and some, perhaps, at least temporarily getting the better of him, as sometimes happens in the best Bugs Bunny cartoons, e.g., Bully for Bugs)?
I’m not a fan of “Merlin of Monroe” as a character or his weird design, but I think the transformations are a highlight!