Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

. . . Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd adopted the supposedly forbidden look in 1942's FRESH HARE. I say "supposedly forbidden" because all three of these pieces (and perhaps countless others) are NOT restricted to the law enforcement and academic environments today. Nosiree, Bob, some perverse interpretation of the "Grandfather Clause" leaves this unholy trio widely available as "entertainment product" to most Americans here in the 21st Century. I will not contribute to the distribution of this soiled material by specifying exactly WHICH Astaire and Crawford feature films share FRESH HARE's Black-Like-Me-Ness (but it's not hard to find out on IMDb or Wikipedia). Both movies appear frequently on the Turner Classic Movie TV channel. As anyone who follows current events knows, kiddie porn had not been "grand-fathered" into our permissible culture. Get caught with a vintage Coppertone Suntan Lotion ad in your possession, and it's twenty years in the slammer for you, Bub! But I just watched FRESH HARE on a Turner DVD released in 2007! Ted Turner seems to be the common thread here. When he owned the Atlanta Braves, he initiated the racist "Tomahawk Chop" chant with then-wife Jane Fonda at home games. He also seems to be America's biggest Blackface peddler. Heaven forbid Ted branches out into kiddie porn.

The much-discussed black-face ending is a non-sequitur, by its nature completely gratuitous. It is blurred out in a recent Digiview Public Domain version and an R - for Restricted? - appears in a box at the top left of the screen.Other versions are available without the censorship. Or used to be.Of its time and not a good gag but such meddling does not reflect well on the company. All it says to me is that these PD racketeers just want to market their wares to kiddies.I'd cite this title as fairly strong evidence that Bugs is a gay character. Maybe someone with a bad conscience will censor the kissing, the sexualized power-games and the give-away silhouette in the snow. But who is the lady in this relationship? We are left guessing.

In "Fresh Hare", an obese Elmer Fudd is a Mountie and out to get Bugs Bunny. Needless to say, Bugs isn't going to get trapped so easily. This is just one of many cartoons showing why the Looney Tunes outdid the Disney stuff easily. The scene where Bugs "drops" Elmer out of the service is enough to make anyone die laughing, as is the scene where they run through the ice. There is, however, one scene likely to make us nervous - and possibly doubt the whole cartoon - in the 21st century: at the end, they do a minstrel show, complete with black-face. But other than that, the whole thing's a hoot. Truly classic.Like Michael Moore reminds us: Canada is the greatest place on Earth.

You know the quality is going to be above average when a cartoon starts with an big orchestral intro and a still picture to complement the titles. Bugs Bunny, looking slightly less cute than he would in later years (and still having to be content with his name under the titles) evades and tricks Elmer the Mountie at every turn. Back in these days Elmer was so overweight he had to wear a girdle. But if you look closely you can actually see him sweating off those pounds during the wild chase scenes.In the forties the Warner Studios were still competing with Disney to produce the best looking animation around. It is obvious a lot of thought and care went into the backgrounds and character animation. Yet they still could not compare to the competition. However when it came to gags the Merry Melodies were unbeatable. There are probably more jokes crammed into these 7 minutes than in any 7 Disney cartoons of the same era. Only the final scene involving a black and white minstrel show feels a bit awkward nowadays, for we like to forget that these totally incorrect programmes ever existed. In fact it was not until the late Sixties that this type of shows was banned, about the same time the Merry Melodies ended their run. 7 out of 10