Falling Hare - Plot Synopsis

Plot Synopsis

This cartoon opens with the title credits over the strains of "Down By The Riverside", then into an extended series of establishing shots of an Army Air Force base, to the brassy strains of "We’re In To Win" (a World War II song also sung by Daffy Duck in Scrap Happy Daffy a year before). The sign at the base reads "U.S. Army Air Field", and below that is shown the location, the number of planes and number of men, all marked "Censored" as a reference to military secrecy. Beneath those categories, the sign reads "What men think of top sergeant", which is shown with a large white-on-black "CENSORED!!", as the language implied would not pass scrutiny by the Hays Office.

Bugs is found reclining on a piece of ordnance, idly reading Victory Through Hare Power (a parody of the extremely influential book Victory Through Air Power and its Disney film adaptation) and laughing uproariously at the book's claim that gremlins wreck American planes with "di-a-bo-lick-al sab-oh-tay-jee" (diabolical sabotage). He immediately encounters one of the creatures, who is experimentally striking the bomb Bugs is sitting on with a mallet to the tune of "I've Been Working on the Railroad". In response to Bug's "What's all the hubbub, bub?" the gremlin replies in a nasal voice, "These Blockbuster bombs don't go off unless you hit them ju-u-u-u-st right." Noticing the gremlin's lack of success, Bugs offers to "take a whack at it" in a whispering voice, but comes to his senses an instant before striking the detonator, screaming "What am I doing?!" Bugs asks the audience sotto voce, "Say, do youse t'ink dat was a... gremlin?" The gremlin, perched on Bugs' shoulder the whole time, shouts in his ear, "It ain't Vendell Villkie!"

The Gremlin ties up Bugs' ears leaving him confused and hits his foot with a monkey wrench. The gremlin continues to outsmart Bugs throughout the film, either by kicking him, clobbering some part of Bugs with the monkey wrench, or otherwise giving him grief, taunting Bugs following two of his "hits" on Bugs by "laughing" the first seven notes of Yankee Doodle once both are aboard the aircraft. Bugs soon finds himself fighting a losing battle with the gremlin inside a flying but unpiloted bomber (resembling a Douglas B-18 Bolo). The gremlin clobbers Bugs on the head with the monkey wrench causing him to faint. The gremlin then pulls out Bugs' tongue and releases it, rolling up like a loose roller shade. Bugs then rouses himself and chases the gremlin with the monkey wrench, only to get hit on the foot again with it. Bugs then charges the gremlin and goes all the way outside, suddenly realizes he's in mid-air, stops suddenly and transforms into a donkey lettered with the then-hyphenated word, "JACK-ASS". When Bugs comes back inside from being outside by slipping on the Gremlin's banana peels littering the cabin floor of the aircraft mid-flight, his heart is pounding, with 4F labeled on it (the term refers to a military draftee rejected for being physically unfit). Bugs is flattened into a coin shape, then is dropped through the bomb bay doors, where he is caught by his feet on a wire between the doors. He sees the Gremlin in the cockpit and at the controls, flying toward a pair of twin towers and quickly rushes into the cockpit, takes control of the airplane, and flies between the towers vertically, emerging in a "victory roll".

In the finale, the plane goes into a tailspin (ripping apart during its descent, with only the fuselage remaining), and the airspeed indicator's spinning numbers briefly remind Bugs, "Incredible Ain't It???", but comes to a sputtering halt (with sound effects by voice actor Mel Blanc, borrowing from his portrayal of the Maxwell automobile on the radio show The Jack Benny Program) about six feet before hitting the ground, hanging in mid-air, defying gravity.

Bugs and the Gremlin now seem to be on friendly terms as they both address the audience. The gremlin apologizes for the plane having "run out of gas". Bugs chimes in and just as he speaks, the camera pans to the right, revealing a wartime gas rationing sticker: "You know how it is with these 'A' cards!"

That unexpected gag probably resonated well with the audience(for its time). The "A" card, under the reverse-psychology of the rationing scheme, was the least generous of the classifications, limiting the bearer to minimal gasoline purchases; the "Is this trip really necessary?" gag was also related to gas rationing of the period. A similar gag was pulled in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, during the scene where the spy car stops in mid-air because it ran out of gas. However, it soon crashes after Kate mentions that reality doesn't work like that.