Falling Hare (1943)
At a US Army airfield, Bugs Bunny squares off against a gremlin bent on sabotaging a bomb before it can be loaded, chasing the creature aboard a plane for a wild, gravity-defying dogfight.
Falling Hare was retitled from the planned “Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin” after Walt Disney asked other studios to avoid gremlin material while he developed his own feature; the finished Bob Clampett short is now one of the few Bugs Bunny cartoons in the public domain, its copyright left unrenewed by Associated Artists Productions.
Background
Falling Hare was originally planned under the title “Bugs Bunny and the Gremlin,” but Walt Disney had asked other studios to avoid using gremlin-themed material while his own studio developed a planned feature based on the creatures, so director Bob Clampett retitled the short before release. The plot follows Bugs Bunny at a US Army airfield, facing off against a gremlin determined to sabotage a bomb before it can be loaded onto a plane, leading to a wild aerial chase.
What to watch for
Watch for Clampett’s characteristically frenetic, elastic animation style, which pushes the characters’ expressions and movements further than the more restrained house style some other directors favored at Warner Bros. The short is also notable as one of relatively few Bugs Bunny cartoons to fall into the public domain, after Associated Artists Productions, which handled distribution for some Warner Bros. shorts, failed to renew the copyright.
