{"id":47232,"date":"2025-04-16T08:00:34","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=47232"},"modified":"2025-04-19T08:53:51","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T12:53:51","slug":"every-bugs-bunny-ever-bugs-and-thugs-1954","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/16\/every-bugs-bunny-ever-bugs-and-thugs-1954\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Bugs and Thugs (1954)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bugs and Thugs<\/strong> (1954)
\nDirected by\tFriz Freleng
\nStory by\tWarren Foster
\nMusic by\tMilt Franklyn
\nAnimation by\tManuel Perez, Ken Champin, Virgil Ross, Arthur Davis<\/p>\n

Friz Freleng\u2019s \u201cBugs and Thugs\u201d is a reworking of his 1946 \u201cRacketeer Rabbit\u201d that pitted Bugs Bunny against the bank robbers Rocky and Hugo, which were caricatures of Edward G. Robinson and Peter Lorre. In this 1954 film, the criminals are originals \u2013 Rocky, a diminutive, stone-faced tough guy with a cigarette hanging from his lower lip and an outrageously oversized vertical fedora that obscured his eyes, and his large oafish partner Mugsy. Rocky had previously been used in Daffy Duck\u2019s \u201cGolden Yeggs\u201d (1950) and the Sylvester and Tweety \u201cCatty Cornered\u201d (1953) with different (and more competent) oversized sidekicks.
\n<\/p>\n

The \u201cBugs and Thugs\u201d villains are superior to their \u201cRacketeer Rabbit\u201d predecessors. In the first film, the Robinson caricature was hilarious, but the Lorre caricature barely had anything to do and abruptly disappeared without explanation halfway through the story. In \u201cBugs and Thugs,\u201d Rocky has his hands full with two disruptive forces \u2013 the smart-aleck Bugs, who winds up becoming a hostage after mistaking the crooks\u2019 getaway car for a taxi, and Mugsy, whose cheerful idiocy creates major headaches as the story unfolds. <\/p>\n

Warren Foster\u2019s story is brilliantly overpacked with inventive sight gags and snappy dialogue that unfurls an exhilarating pace. Among the most remarkable highlights are the surrealism of having Bugs\u2019 phone booth call to the police ending with the officer being pulled through the phone lines and into the road (notice the battered cop\u2019s bare behind in the photo below), the image of Bugs being substituted for a missing front tire (see the above photo), the gangster\u2019s hideout on the edge of a cliff with a back porch with steps that lead directly into the chasm below, and the climax with Bugs tricking his captors into believing the police are coming and hiding them in a stove that he lights and blows up.<\/p>\n

\u201cBugs and Thugs\u201d is also notable as Milt Franklyn\u2019s first screen credit as a composer on a Warner Bros. cartoon, although he was with the studio as an arranger since 1936. <\/p>\n

Sadly for Rocky and Mugsy, this was their lightning-in-a-bottle moment. They didn\u2019t show up again until \u201cBugsy and Mugsy\u201d (1957) and \u201cThe Unmentionables\u201d (1963), which were among the worst Bugs Bunny cartoons. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bugs and Thugs (1954) Directed by Friz Freleng Story by Warren Foster Music by Milt Franklyn Animation by Manuel Perez, Ken Champin, Virgil Ross, Arthur Davis Friz Freleng\u2019s \u201cBugs and Thugs\u201d is a reworking of his 1946 \u201cRacketeer Rabbit\u201d that pitted Bugs Bunny against the bank robbers Rocky and Hugo, which were caricatures of Edward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":47233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3068],"tags":[99,167,3490,3661],"class_list":["post-47232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bugs-bunny-ever","tag-animation","tag-bugs-bunny","tag-friz-freleng","tag-rocky-and-mugsy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47232","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=47232"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47324,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47232\/revisions\/47324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}