{"id":53328,"date":"2026-06-03T07:00:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T11:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=53328"},"modified":"2026-06-02T18:19:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T22:19:28","slug":"every-bugs-bunny-ever-transylvania-6-5000-1963","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/03\/every-bugs-bunny-ever-transylvania-6-5000-1963\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Transylvania 6-5000 (1963)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Transylvania 6-5000<\/strong> (1963)
\nDirected by Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble
\nStory by John Dunn
\nAnimation by Bob Bransford, Tom Ray, Ken Harris, Richard Thompson
\nMusic by Bill Lava<\/p>\n

Bugs Bunny is burrowing his way to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but winds up in Pittsburghe, Transylvania. After engaging in a brief conversation with a two-headed lady vulture, he ventures to an eerie castle (which he mistakes for a motel) in search of a telephone to call his travel agent. The castle belongs to the vampire Count Bloodcount, who convinces Bugs to spend the night. Unable to sleep, Bugs finds a book of magic phrases and begins to read them aloud, not realizing that he is changing Count Bloodcount into a bat and then back into his human form \u2013 always at the worst possible moment.
\n<\/p>\n

\u201cTransylvania 6-5000\u201d is notable as Chuck Jones\u2019 final entry in the Bugs Bunny series and his second-to-last Warner Bros. short. The studio fired him when it was discovered he breached his exclusive contract to moonlight on the feature-length animated film \u201cGay Purr-ee\u201d for UPA \u2013 which, strangely, Warner Bros. acquired for distribution.<\/p>\n

For his sign-off, Jones (with co-director Maurice Noble and screenwriter John Dunn) created one of the best of the late entries in the Bugs Bunny series with an inventive and laugh-out-loud work that recalls the best output of the series.<\/p>\n

Count Bloodcount is a wonderful creation, using his Lugosi-style phrasing to spin comically sinister lines like \u201cRest is good for the blood.\u201d The climactic duel of magic words between Bugs and the vampire harkens back to the mayhem from the \u201cHunting Trilogy\u201d cartoons where loaded phrases inevitably bring wreckage to Bugs\u2019 foe \u2013 in this case, the use of \u201cAbracadabra\u201d and \u201cHocus Pocus\u201d that creates abrupt transformations for Count Bloodcount that result in slapstick harm.<\/p>\n

Also worth commending here is the visually clever production design, which is eons removed from the flat and dull animation that marred too many of the cartoons of this period. The count\u2019s castle is a riot of horror-comic design, with coffin-shaped doorways, skull-shaped doorknobs, and family portraits of bats hanging upside down from trees. The bookcase where Bugs finds the text on magic phrases has such titles as \u201cRise and Fall of the Roman Vampire\u201d and \u201cHealth and Care of Fangs.\u201d There\u2019s even a rapid cameo of Witch Hazel.<\/p>\n

This is the rare Bugs Bunny short where the full cast of voice actors get credit, with Mel Blanc sharing acknowledgments with Ben Frommer (as Count Bloodcount) and Julie Bennett (as the two-headed lady vulture).<\/p>\n