Falling Hare

Bob Clampett. Falling Hare. USA 1943

Purely a war time cartoon, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Bugs is relaxing by an air base when he runs afoul of a gremlin.

Now gremlins had been in the American popular culture during the war as a series of war time posters, warning the watcher to beware mistakes. Prior to that they were as a more English folk creature with a taste for sabotaging airplanes.

The image of the gremlin had been of a trickster fixated on wrecking planes. Roald Dahl had even written a story about them, based on his service in the RAF. Walt Disney himself even got into gremlin-mania, with the idea of a animated film being bounced around for a 1942 release.

For a variety of reasons that didn't happen, but far be it for a studio to ignore an idea, so while Disney may have passed, Warner Bros. decided to go ahead.

Overall good, although most of the jokes are tied to the war effort and that might go over the head of modern viewers, especially the final punchline. Who would get gas rationing today?