In this primetime television special, dimwitted law enforcement agent Elmer Fudd arrests Bugs Bunny for being the notorious bank robber known as the Tall Dark Stranger. Bugs goes to prison but aggravates corrections officer Yosemite Sam to the point that Sam kicks him out of the facility. Bugs is eager to clear his name, although he faces distracting detours from Wile E. Coyote (who attempts to capture and eat him) and Tweety and Sylvester (who engage in violent knockabout during a train ride where Bugs is a passenger).
“The Bugs Bunny Mystery Special” was another hodgepodge of classic post-1948 cartoons mixed with not-so-classic new animation. The new stuff includes a half-hearted attempted to spoof Alfred Hitchcock films, with Porky Pig introducing the show in a parody of Hitchcock’s television hosting gig and Bugs doing a Cary Grant riff by hanging off the face of “Mount Leghorn.”
Mercifully, the classic animation involves several beloved treasures including “Operation: Rabbit” and a clever cross-editing between “Bugs and Thugs” and “Baby Buggy Bunny” that gives the impression Bugs is in a bank when it is being robbed. Ultimately, the pluses outweigh the negatives in this amusing entry in the Bugs-centric television specials.