Buccaneer Bunny



Buccaneer Bunny is a 1947 Warner Bros. animated cartoon in the Looney Tunes series, released in 1948, directed by Friz Freleng. It features Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, the latter known in this picture as "Sea-Goin' Sam", a pirate. All voice characterizations in this cartoon are by Mel Blanc. This cartoon is found on Disc 1 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 5

Synopsis
The cartoon opens with titles featuring an instrumental of "The Sailor's Hornpipe" (also one of the theme songs to the Popeye cartoon series), seguéing to a scene of Sam digging a hole to bury his treasure on a beach. Sam is singing the stereotypical pirate shanty "Dead Man's Chest"--on the second strain, Sam switches from the typical "yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!" to a decidedly more original "yo-ho-ho and a bottle of... Ma's old fashioned ci-der" with a conga kick on the last syllable and a parody of "Dad's Old-Fashioned Root Beer", a well-known radio advertising jingle at that time.

In attempting to bury his treasure, Sam has encroached on Bugs' domain, as Bugs happens to have his rabbit hole there on the beach. When Bugs asks him who he is, he responds in his typical way: "I'm a pirate, Sea-Goin' Sam, the blood-thirstiest, shoot-'em-first-iest, doggone worst-iest buccaneer that ever sailed the Spanish main!"

Bugs spends the rest of the picture tormenting Sam in the usual way, taking advantage of Sam's short temper and blustery personality. At one point, Bugs disguises himself as Captain Bligh (effecting the voice and thick-lipped appearance of Charles Laughton in his portrayal of Bligh in Mutiny On The Bounty) and puts the gullible seaman through a whirlwind of shipboard chores.

In a side gag, Bugs is trying to hide, and a pesky parrot keeps crowing, "He's in there! He's in there! Awk!" Finally, Bugs asks the parrot, "Polly want a cracker?" The parrot changes his tune, "Polly want a cracker! Polly want a cracker! Awk!" Bugs hands him a huge, lit firecracker, which promptly explodes, reducing the bird to near-skeletal remains. His last words before he drops are, "Me and my big mouth!"

In a series of gags that mildly anticipate the Road Runner series, Bugs is in the crow's nest and Sam tries various unsuccessful attempts to get to him; for example, setting up a see-saw, standing on one end and tossing a rock on the other end, he springs straight up, crashes into the underside of the crow's nest, and falls back to the deck. In another one, that skirts the laws of physics, Bugs tells Sam he's going to jump. Instead, Bugs drops a convenient anvil over the side of the crow's nest, Sam catches it, and the entire ship (except for the crows nest) submerges. Sam mouths some apparent curses, then tosses the anvil over the railing and the ship resurfaces.

At various times, Sam gets blasted by cannon fire, is subjected to the famous lots-of-doors in-and-out routine (previously used in Little Red Riding Rabbit), and finally is tricked by Bugs into playing a "dare" game with matches that ends up exploding the pirate ship's powder magazine, reducing the ship to splinters. Finally, defeated, Sam raises the white flag. Bugsy turns to the audience, puts on an old-style ship captain's hat, and paraphrases John Paul Jones, "I had not even begun to fight!"

Censorship

 * The now defunct WB! channel edited this cartoon to remove the part where Bugs tells Sam that "Dead men tell no tales," and Sam almost shoots himself in the head before realizing he's been tricked.

Trivia

 * During a few explosions, Sam is shown without his beard and is shaved. Sam's shaved appearance would also come in place in Ballot Box Bunny and Big House Bunny a few years later.
 * A similar sequence where Bugs throws a lit match into the powder magazine of Sam's ship would later be used in Captain Hareblower (1954).