Sunday, October 01, 2006

Honourable mentions: Bugs Bunny in Transylvania 65000

title screen

Directed by: Chuck Jones

First released: 1963

An honourable mention for this 6-7 minute cartoon in which Bugs Bunny, whilst trying to get to Pittsburgh goes off course (again) and ends up in Pittsburghe, Transylvania. Having spoken to a two headed vulture he seeks a telephone, in order to speak to the Acme Travel Agency, at the near-by motel - actually the castle of Count Bloodcount.

Bugs and the CountThe look of the vampire is interesting. At the head of the cartoon we see little but shadow, which owes much in inspiration to Nosferatu (1922), I feel, as the first movie to clearly make use of the vampire’s shadow. Then we have quite a bit of holding cloak before the face, reminiscent of Lugosi. When seen clearly the vampire has an apparent lower (rather square) fang that sits comfortably in an upper lip groove.

Much of the jokes come in the form of Bugs having read a book of magic and (innocently?) sa curious librarypeaking the magic words Abracadabra and Hocus Pocus, which turns the Count into a bat and back again to slapstick effect. We also have baseball jokes with Bugs as an umpire to the Count’s vampire, and as a baseball bat to the Count’s bat. The book itself is found on a shelf of books packed with joke titles such as the “Rise and Fall of the Roman Vampire.”

The imdb page is here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

...and this one...

Kuudere-Kun said...

“Rise and Fall of the Roman Vampire.”

That's a refrence you have to be pretty educated to get. People forget how smart the Loony Tunes skits where. The new show pales in comparison to the old shorts or Tiny Toons.