The Big Snooze

After one time too often falling foul of Bugs Bunny's tricks, Elmer Fudd rips up his contract with Warner Brothers Studios and leaves to get some R&R fishing by the lake. Realising that his strongest career sidekick is important in his own career, Bugs goes after him and enters his dreams to encourage him to return to the job at hand.

The cartoon starts very abruptly and continues in that vein as scenes appear to just jump around very quickly and without a huge amount of internal structure. The plot cleverly acknowledges a reality of contracts (which of course, isn't reality for cartoon characters) and also has some funny asides from Bugs, but it doesn't appear to have a central plot. The dream sequence is colourful and well drawn but not necessarily funny as a result. I never fully got why Bugs took this approach to the problem!

The characters are good. Bugs does his usual stuff but doesn't seem relaxed in the cartoon - the dialogue is edited too fine and close for his style I felt. Fudd has little to do and his character doesn't serve as well as he usually does as a foil to Bugs - he simply isn't given the time to respond in a way he normally is.

Overall, almost any cartoon with Bugs and Fudd is going to be work watching for me, but this one just seemed a bit aimless - like the dream sequence was the original idea and the rest of it was just a thin excuse to get to it. It is all over a bit fast and without any really hilarious action, it is OK but really is a poor entry from this famous double act.

If you thought that Bob Clampett had gone as far out of normalcy as possible with "Porky in Wackyland" and "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", then check out "The Big Snooze". When Elmer Fudd - tired of always Bugs Bunny always embarrassing him - tears up his Warner Bros. contract, Bugs does something that I wouldn't even imagine him (of all people) doing: he invades Elmer's dreams, creating one of the most surreal sequences that I've ever witnessed. Who would have ever guessed that Bugs Bunny was Freddy Krueger's forebear?!

Above all, it's a good thing that I first saw this cartoon now, when I'm old enough to fully understand what it portrays (not to mention that I know who Bette Davis was). Had I watched this when I was six or somewhere thereabouts, I would have naively laughed at it without realizing what the gist was; or it might have scared me. As Looney Tunes screenwriter Michael Maltese said in an interview: "We wrote cartoons for grownups, that was the secret."

But overall, this is a really cool cartoon. Bob Clampett, during the approximately one decade that he worked with the Termite Terrace crowd, created a body of work beyond what I could have ever conceived of. I recommend it.

'The Big Snooze (1946),' a Looney Tunes short directed by Robert Clampett, is basically seven minutes of cultural references: the title is derived from Howard Hawks' classic Bogart-Bacall film-noir, 'The Big Sleep (1946),' and there are throwaway mentions of Bette Davis, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Damon Runyon and Mr. Jack L. Warner himself. The film's premise, in some eerie twist of Einstein's space-time continuum, even appears to reference Freddy Krueger and 'A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984),' though greater minds than mine could undoubtedly arrive at a more sensible conclusion. The opening sequence was recycled from the 1941 Bugs Bunny cartoon, 'All This and Rabbit Stew (1941),' with Elmer Fudd substituted for the black hunter from that film. 'The Big Snooze' wanders quite aimlessly through its scenario, but the idea itself is clever enough to last the total running time. As usual, Mel Blanc voiced the wabbit, but Arthur Q. Bryan (uncredited) is responsible the characterisation of Fudd.

In a shrewdly self-referential twist on the usual formula, Elmer, after being outsmarted by the mischievous Bugs for the last time, angrily tears up his Warner Bros. contract and decides to spend the rest of his days fishing. Fearing for his own career, Bugs attempts to frighten Elmer back into acting, and does so by entering into his dreams and systematically turning them into a string of terrifying nightmares, plagued by horrific armies of annoying "wabbits." With the realisation that retirement isn't quite as peaceful as he'd anticipated, Elmer promptly returns to the film set and accepts that it is simply his duty to be consistently suckered by a rascally rabbit. Just as the classic 'Duck Amuck (1954)' derived humour from its self-referential nature, Clampett's film {ironically enough, the last that he made for Warner Bros.} has some fun with the conjecture that Elmer Fudd is a contracted actor on the studio's payroll. The dream sequence is colourful, chaotic and suitably threatening, and Bugs appears to get a lot of enjoyment from tormenting the hapless little hunter.

I own the compilation that 'The Big Snooze' is featured on. From the get go....the stand alone cartoon seems pretty much like any of the other Bugs Bunny 'toons. Fudd chases 'wabbit'....wabbit makes him look like a sucker....and so on so forth. Until....Elmer has finally decided he's had enough. At first....seems Elmer is going to finally be free. Or so he thinks. After all....as Bugs put it....'think of your career. And for dat matter think of my career.' From there it just goes into the category of just plain silly. The 'nightmare paint' and the other touches bringing a surreal sense to the whole thing. And then there was 'da Super Chief!' Not to mention the book....aptly titled '1001 Arabian Nightmares.' And of course....what would a cartoon like this with that 'wascally wabbit' be without some clever misdirection from the craziest hare in the world....thereby allowing him to run amok. Elmer after stopping [Why did 'she' stop?] : 'Have any of you girls ever had an experience like this?' Oh sure Elmer....you should've known better when that rabbit set you up by skewing your expression of [surprise] anger over being the 'fall guy' once again. Of course if you had....the cartoon would've been ruined. And to think what we would've missed along the way if you had stayed retired. All in all....not to be missed. If you can find the compilation tape still. 'Bugs vs Elmer.'

Big Snooze, The (1946)

*** (out of 4)

Elmer Fudd, tired of being abused by Bugs Bunny, decides to tear up his contract to Warner and go on vacation. Bugs needs him back so the rabbit invades his dreams to cause a nightmare. This is certainly a wild short but I've never found it to be a funny one. What does work here are the amazing colors inside the "nightmare", which look absolutely stunning in their remastered form. The visuals are certainly the main reason to watch this film as there aren't too many laughs. The film starts off with a chase, which would normally end a cartoon but here the gag is somewhat funny. The best sequence is the famous one where Elmer is tied to the train tracks and a train of rabbits run over him.