Bedevilled Rabbit (1957)

It's Bugs versus the Tasmanian Devil again in this fun short directed by Robert McKimson. This is Taz's second appearance, three years after his first. After an opening with Bugs (inside a crate of carrots) being dropped via parachute into Tasmania, we pretty much get a rehash of part of the first Bugs/Taz cartoon, Devil May Hare. There's an animal stampede, followed by Bugs reading up on Taz and discovering he eats rabbits, and then the meeting of the two and subsequent back & forth. As with the last cartoon, the premise is very simple but funny. Wonderful voice work from Mel Blanc. The animation is nice and colorful. Taz is far from one of my favorite characters but Bugs provides most of the laughs. Worth a look for most Looney Tunes fans.

" . . . toss a mean salad," Bugs Bunny says to the Tazmanian Devil in this Merrie Melodies Short, BEDEVILLED RABBIT. Claude, the devil in question, is a whirlwind of sexual confusion. He's so messed up, he prefers a cross-dressing interspecies partner (Bugs) to his actual spouse, Rosebud. Who could have a problem with that? Those sensitive to racial ridicule, for one group. When Bugs dresses up in his "Marsha" she-devil mode here, he caricatures the Facial Stylings of some African indigenous peoples with a clueless insensitivity. Perhaps just as bad, the devil-known-as-Claude seems to have an avocation of being the Destroyer of Trees. Does Claude use his forest carnage to at least build dams, like those industrious beavers? No, he just girdles trunks through and through, leaving his victim trees as deadly booby traps, liable to Smish unwary passers-by with no warning whatsoever. Finally, Bugs' home-made firework explodes inside Claude, causing no apparent damage. No one would be so careless in Real Life, despite Bugs' bad example, you might think. But at least TWO NFL players lost fingers this month in similar fashion. Just how many "Merrie Melodies" did they see as kids?

I have always loved and enjoyed Looney Tunes. Bugs and Taz are not my favourite pairing, and while I did enjoy Bedevilled Rabbit- it is one of their better cartoons together- I still do feel that. I do find Bugs to be a stronger character, arrogant, intelligent and likable. Taz actually does give one of his better performances, he has things to say and a lot of it like "What for you say you monkey when you got little powderpuff tail like rabbit? RABBIT!!" is hilarious. However compared to Bugs he is a little bland, Bugs does work better generally with Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd. The writing is fresh and deliciously witty, and the gags with Bugs reading the list of things Taz loves to eat, Bugs tricking Taz into untying him, what is in Taz's salad(though it is a shock as well) and Bugs disguising himself as a Tasmanian She-Devil. The animation is appropriately colourful and fluid, while the music is full of character and lively orchestration. Mel Blanc is stellar. All in all, a very good cartoon but not one of my favourites. 8/10 Bethany Cox

In case people have forgotten the Tasmanian Devil, "Bedevilled Rabbit" reminds us of him. When Bugs Bunny gets parachuted into Tasmania (where's that?), Taz quickly gets hungry and sets his sights on Bugs. Sure enough, Bugs is way ahead of Taz, and always can pull anything seemingly out of thin air to play all sorts of tricks. If these cartoons were nothing more than excuses to pull all sorts of crazy gags, then they played it to great effect. It's great to watch them go all out time and again. Truly classic. There will never be any cartoons like these again.Oh, and in case you don't actually know: Tasmania is the island south of Australia.