{"id":46909,"date":"2025-03-26T08:12:36","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T12:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=46909"},"modified":"2025-03-26T08:12:55","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T12:12:55","slug":"every-bugs-bunny-ever-duck-rabbit-duck-1953","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/26\/every-bugs-bunny-ever-duck-rabbit-duck-1953\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (1953)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Duck! Rabbit! Duck!<\/strong> (1953)
\nDirected by\tCharles M. Jones
\nStory by\tMichael Maltese
\nAnimation by\tKen Harris, Abe Levitow, Richard Thompson, Lloyd Vaughan, Ben Washam
\nMusic by\tCarl Stalling and Milt Franklyn<\/p>\n

The final entry in the \u201cHunting Trilogy\u201d that pits Bugs Bunny against Daffy Duck against Elmer Fudd, \u201cDuck! Rabbit! Duck!\u201d is the weakest of the three films due to joke repetition and an uneven balance among the characters.
\n<\/p>\n

This time, the setting is the woodlands in the midst of a snowy winter. It\u2019s duck hunting season and Daffy Duck is tearing down and burning up the signs alerting hunters to the approved prey \u2013 an act of self-preservation that he handles while humming Edith Piaf\u2019s \u201cLa Vie en Rose\u201d (don\u2019t ask why). Daffy tricks Elmer Fudd into believing it is rabbit hunting season, but Bugs Bunny claims that he can\u2019t be hunted because he\u2019s a fricasseeing rabbit and Elmer lacks the licensing to shoot at that time of prey. Daffy’s short-fuse ignites and he volunteers to create the proper license \u2013 but when he can\u2019t spell “fricasseeing” and asks Bugs for help, the rascally rabbit gives him a spelling for a “fricasseeing duck.” Elmer reads the license, looks at the viewer in bafflement while Daffy insists that he carry out to shooting, and then fires point blank into Daffy\u2019s face. Daffy reviews the license, realizes what occurred and sighs, \u201cWell, guess I\u2019m the goat\u201d \u2013 at which point Bugs takes out a sign that says \u201cGoat Season Open\u201d and Elmer responds by shooting Daffy again in the face.<\/p>\n

So far, so good, except that the cartoon back-pedals into constant variations on the sign gag. When Daffy refers to himself as a dirty skunk, pigeon and mongoose, Bugs abruptly pulls out signs declaring it is the hunting season for each animal and Elmer shoots Daffy in response. \u201cDuck! Rabbit! Duck!\u201d devolves as Daffy\u2019s ultimately collapses into nervous breakdown from constantly being shot at, while Elmer cracks up when he asks a game warden (actually, Bugs in disguise) what hunting season it is. The fake warden says it is baseball season and throws a ball into the snow, which the now-deranged Elmer shoots.<\/p>\n

Unlike the earlier \u201cRabbit Fire\u201d and \u201cRabbit Seasoning,\u201d most of the humor here is generated by Daffy\u2019s increasingly frantic inability to get the best of Bugs. Elmer is just a dumb foil and Bugs is so beyond his nemeses that there is no fun in seeing him bedevil them into fits of hysteria. Mercifully, director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese knew they exhausted the possibilities of this series and would later focus on Bugs and Daffy as frenemies while only bringing back Elmer for the triangular relation with the uncharacteristic role as a giant in the 1955 \u201cBeanstalk Bunny.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Duck! Rabbit! Duck! (1953) Directed by Charles M. Jones Story by Michael Maltese Animation by Ken Harris, Abe Levitow, Richard Thompson, Lloyd Vaughan, Ben Washam Music by Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn The final entry in the \u201cHunting Trilogy\u201d that pits Bugs Bunny against Daffy Duck against Elmer Fudd, \u201cDuck! Rabbit! Duck!\u201d is the weakest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":46910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3068],"tags":[99,167,2078,1317,2523,2158],"class_list":["post-46909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bugs-bunny-ever","tag-animation","tag-bugs-bunny","tag-cartoon","tag-chuck-jones","tag-daffy-duck","tag-elmer-fudd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46909"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46915,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46909\/revisions\/46915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}