Growing up a fan of the classic horror movie monsters, I always enjoyed seeing the Looney Tunes shorts with a horror theme. Whether it was Frankenstein or Dracula or a witch or whatever, it was something I got a kick out of (and still do, really). Here we have a kindly old doctor bringing Bugs home to be his new pet, an arrangement Bugs is surprisingly happy with. The doctor turns out to be Dr. Jekyll, who drinks a potion and turns into the horrible Mr. Hyde. What follows is Bugs trying to escape the monstrous Hyde, while also protecting Jekyll because he doesn't realize they are one and the same. The animation is beautiful. Love the colors and the backgrounds are very nice. Excellent voice work from Mel Blanc. Carl Stalling's music is energetic and fun. It's a funny cartoon with a cool ending and one of my favorite bits of random business in any Bugs short: Bugs doing a bizarre Liberace impression ("I wish my brother George was here.").

. . . Hare, green fur and all, in this Warner Bros. animated short, HYDE AND HARE. Always a gifted pianist, America's favorite rabbit also performs Chopin's "Minute Waltz" flawlessly (though Mr. Hyde deprives us of the final 39 seconds). Dr. Jekyll as a wimpy bunny lover absent his live-action feature film strumpet patients plays a sour second fiddle to the harmonious hare, however, in HYDE. Most, if not all, viewers will finish this episode wondering what the chartreuse rabbit will do next, and resent Dr. Jekyll for hogging so much of the screen time, thus depriving us of an answer. Mr. Hyde fares little better here. One can take just so many Hyde-and-go-Squeak sequences within a confined space before they become quite monotonous. With most Looney Tunes, you feel that the animators reached at least 110% of the potential of their material. But HYDE AND HARE checks in at a much more pedestrian 65 or 70% at best.

While I usually consider the Bugs Bunny cartoons some of the best ever produced, "Hyde and Hare" seems a little lame, namely because of repetition. It portrays Bugs getting adopted by Dr. Jekyll, who quickly drinks his potion and turns into Mr. Hyde, and proceeds to chase Bugs all over the place. The whole thing about him changing back and forth behind Bugs's back gets tiresome pretty quickly.Still, Bugs himself has some good lines, especially the one at the end. Maybe we expect so much from the crowd behind the Looney Tunes cartoons that something like this seems weak. Maybe they created this when they couldn't come up with any other ideas. Not terrible, but don't make it your first choice.

Bugs Bunny here presents himself as a normal, everyday bunny rabbit who is adopted and taken home by the mild-mannered Dr Jekyll.Once in the house (playing the Minute Waltz by Chopin, no less) Bugs is startled to find himself chased by a green faced monster wielding an axe - Mr Hyde, after Dr Jekyll's transformation. During the chase the monster changes back to the good doctor several times and then back again (usually once the doctor and Bugs are in a locked room, or a cupboard, etc.).Finally Bugs makes a run for it, but being the rabbit we know and love, and not that normal little bunny, he's taken something he shouldn't ...'Hyde and Hare' is another hilarious and clever Bugs Bunny cartoon, as we have come to expect. It sends up the Stevenson novella and has echoes of the film versions in the transformation from Jekyll to Hyde. It can be found on the double-feature Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde DVD, alongside the feature films from 1932 and 1941.