Haredevil Hare 1948 (Dir Chuck Jones)

(Title Card)

Like most of the cartoons on this disc, Haredevil Hare is important as it's Marvin the Martian ( over here unamed)

So the cartoon starts off ( notice how Jones' early cartoons are straight to the point) with Bugs being lured into a rocket ship, with carrots naturally, for a space mission. As the rocket speeds up (featuring some excellent shots) and crashes, onto the moon.

As Bugs is exploring the new territory he bumps into Marvin the Martian, who is planning to blow up the Earth. after a couple of minutes this registers into Bugs' brain and it is up to him to prevent this from happening.

At first he steals the dynamite that Marvin is using to blow up the Earth but he quickly calls a martian dog to help him ( by the way Marvin's voice is not as nasal sounding as in later cartoons).

The dog actually manages to steal the dynamite stick ( or space modulator as it is called) but Bugs wins it back by the same argument process which was used in 1951's 'Rabbit Fire' - which consists of reversing the argument's subject.

How Bugs won the Modulator back

Finally Bugs gives the modulator back to Marvin, but attached to a detonator, which he pushes down and blows up half the moon in the process. When his Earth superiors finally manage to reach Bugs, he has one message for the Earth, which is

GET ME OUTTA HERE

as Bugs is dangling from the moon with Marvin and the Dog gripping on to him, he is definitely justified in doing this.

To be honest I'm not a big fan of this cartoon. It's ill paced, gags are sporadic and it doesn't feel rounded out. I can see why Jones sort of redid it in 1958's Hare-way to the stars and copied the ending for 1953's Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century. It's not a bad cartoon but doesn't fulfil it's potential.