"Buckaroo Bugs" (1944, Looney Tune)
Director: Bob Clampett
Story: Lou Lilly
Animation: Manny Gould
Voices: Mel Blanc
Music: Carl Stalling
This cartoon is one of the great Bugs Bunny films, and is also a bit unusual, a standout in the series in 1944. Bugs is at the peak of his aggressiveness here, 1944 being possibly his wildest phase, influenced by the wartime spirit and by Clampett's manic style of animating and directing. It's also one of the few cartoons in which Bugs Bunny is used as the bad guy...but yet he still comes out successful in the end. One night in the wild west, the people of a town wonder what has become of their carrots....must be the Masked Marauder! The Masked Marauder is good ol' Bugs in a black bandana, and appears to enjoy every minute of this cartoon as much as the audience. Bugs is chased by a diminutive, stupid, and clueless little cowboy hero named Red Hot Ryder, a sort of cross between the Red Ryder comic strip character of his day and the eventual Yosemite Sam....it is said that this was the inspiration for Friz Freleng's character a year or so later. Bugs sticks him up with a carrot, then holds out a big magnet and robs him of all his metal possessions, including his belt buckle, spare bullets and even his dental fillings! He then pulls Ryder's hat over his head and races off. What follows are a bunch of zany gags, including Ryder having trouble both staying on and stopping his horse (who eventually takes some superglue and affixes the moron to the saddle), Bugs sending him a telegram ("Roses are red, violets are pink....you sure STINK!") and then daring the horse and Ryder to jump a bunch of canyons, until they get to the Grand Canyon and fall. The force of the fall sends them below ground, where Ryder thinks that maybe they were tricked by the Marauder....Bugs tunnels in: "That's right! You win the 64 dollar question!!" Bugs blows out Ryder's candle, ("Good night sweet prince!") and kisses him before the closing of the cartoon. A funny cartoon that, while a bit fast-paced for many Bugs Bunny enthusiasts, is important in that it was the inspiration for Yosemite Sam (who borrows the horse gags in later films by Friz Freleng) and it is one of only a handful of films in which Bugs is the instigator of trouble instead of the defender of his personal space (Clampett was the principal creator of such films, like "Wacky Wabbit" and "Tortoise Wins By A Hare").