{"id":48140,"date":"2025-06-18T07:00:49","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=48140"},"modified":"2025-06-13T18:23:38","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T22:23:38","slug":"every-bugs-bunny-ever-rabbit-rampage-1955","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/18\/every-bugs-bunny-ever-rabbit-rampage-1955\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Rabbit Rampage (1955)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbit Rampage<\/strong> (1955)
\nDirected by Chuck Jones
\nStory by Michael Maltese
\nAnimation by\tBen Washam
\nMusic by\tMilt Franklyn<\/p>\n

In my opinion, \u201cRabbit Rampage\u201d is the worst of the Bugs Bunny cartoons \u2013 which is curious since it is a sequel to \u201cDuck Amuck,\u201d which is my choice as being the best of all the Warner Bros. cartoons.
\n<\/p>\n

\u201cDuck Amuck\u201d was a lightning-in-a-bottle achievement, an uncommon blending of Dadaist imagery in an existential nightmare, with poor neurotic Daffy Duck trying and miserably failing to maintain his dignity and sanity amid lunatic assaults on his professionalism and person by an animator who functions as a malevolent god that repeatedly changes Daffy\u2019s appearance and environment. Daffy is unaware of the animator\u2019s identity and never learns it, as the omnipresent animator paints a door and shuts it on Daffy during his final protest \u2013 the audience finds out the animator is none other than Bugs Bunny, who confides to the viewer: \u201cGee, ain\u2019t I stinker?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDuck Amuck\u201d was not crying out for a sequel, but director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese returned to that film\u2019s unique concept by placing Bugs Bunny as the character under attack by the off-screen animator. But from the start, things went awry. Whereas Daffy had no clue who was tormenting him in \u201cDuck Amuck,\u201d Bugs knows immediately who is controlling the brushes and pencils and peevishly breaks the fourth wall to angrily declare, \u201cOh, it\u2019s you?\u201d <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where \u201cRabbit Rampage\u201d immediately weakens \u2013 while the animator constantly tortures Bugs by changing his appearance and putting him in embarrassing positions, Bugs maintains a sense of control with impatient demands of normalcy that are answered in varying degrees of immediacy. This is most obvious in a sequence where the animator keeps putting elaborate hats on Bugs even though he keeps reminding the artist that he never wears a hat \u2013 Bugs maintains a low boil of disgust at his unfunny predicament. Even worse, Bugs goes so far as to grab the animator’s brush and break it in half. <\/p>\n

Furthermore, the 1950s version of Daffy was perfect for \u201cDuck Amuck\u201d \u2013 his vanity and self-importance make it funnier when he is humiliated, and he responds to his indignities in a wide variety of emotions ranging from confusion to impatience to frustration to angry to being on the edge of a nervous breakdown. In \u201cRabbit Rampage,\u201d Bugs is mostly irritated by the antics of the animator, going so far as to threaten to report his tormentor directly to the Warner Bros. hierarchy. Even the ending is a mistake \u2013 Bugs brings the cartoon to a close by pulling down a title card that reads \u201cThe End,\u201d while the animator is revealed to be a dull Elmer Fudd who admits, \u201cWell anyway, I finawwy got even with that scwewy wabbit.\u201d Of course, this is not the first time that Elmer came out on top \u2013 in fact, the predecessor to this cartoon, \u201cHare Brush,\u201d is the first short where Elmer gets the best of Bugs.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that the Bugs Bunny cartoons cannot be funny when the long-eared protagonist isn\u2019t in control of his situation \u2013 the Cecil Turtle duels or the wacky airplane ride with the mischievous gremlin are hilarious examples of Bugs fighting a losing battle against foes who are faster and smarter than he\u2019ll ever be. But those cartoons were fast, fresh and funny. \u201cRabbit Rampage\u201d has nothing going in its favor, and result is a complete misfire that should never have been released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbit Rampage (1955) Directed by Chuck Jones Story by Michael Maltese Animation by Ben Washam Music by Milt Franklyn In my opinion, \u201cRabbit Rampage\u201d is the worst of the Bugs Bunny cartoons \u2013 which is curious since it is a sequel to \u201cDuck Amuck,\u201d which is my choice as being the best of all the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":48141,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3068],"tags":[99,167,2078,2902,2158,1175],"class_list":["post-48140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bugs-bunny-ever","tag-animation","tag-bugs-bunny","tag-cartoon","tag-duck-amuck","tag-elmer-fudd","tag-warner-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48140","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=48140"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48146,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48140\/revisions\/48146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}