The story is not exactly unfamiliar territory, and is occasionally predictable, but I thoroughly enjoyed The Heckling Hare and found it had a number of interest points. The animation is nice enough to look at, the backgrounds are audacious to watch especially, and the music is a lovely, rousing touch. One major point of interest are some very clever and hilarious sight gags, especially the lengthy fall down the cliff, and the dialogue is funny. Another point of interest is Tex Avery voicing the dog, I felt he did a very good job and his character was entertaining. But for me Bugs steals the show, arrogant and cunning, with excellent vocal work from Mel Blanc. Overall, hilarious and has a lot of interest, but not absolutely exceptional. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Heckling Hare, The (1941) *** (out of 4) The hunting dog Willoughby is out sniffing for a rabbit and of course finds Bugs Bunny but soon he's going to wish he hadn't. This is another winning short from director Avery who apparently walked away from Warner after a falling out due to the ending here. I certainly don't know all of the details but I did find the ending here to be the best thing about the movie, although one could argue the actual payoff is a tad bit of a cheat. The rest of the film isn't among Avery's best work but I think it's still a good film. Both Bugs and Willoughby work well together and there are plenty of funny scenes including the before mentioned ending as well as another scene where the dog thinks he has killed bugs.

Tex Avery's 'The Heckling Hare' is classic Bugs Bunny all over. Bugs' fifth ever appearance, it was also the cartoon that lead to Avery being fired from Warner Bros. Pitting Bugs against a dim-witted dog (voiced by Avery himself and modeled on Lenny from 'Of Mice and Men'), 'The Heckling Hare' further cemented the character of Bugs which Avery had been instrumental in creating. There's very little plot in this woodland chase but that is irrelevant when you take into account the many brilliant and inventive gags and how beautifully animated they are. Just look at the scene where Bugs puts on his swimming cap, carefully tucking his ears in each side. Check out not one but two fantastic gags involving just Bugs' ears and nothing else! The dopey dog is so little threat to Bugs that he actually takes a moment in the middle of the cartoon to wonder aloud "Now what can I do to this guy now?" This lack of any real threat allows Bugs to turn on his heckling full blast (as the title would suggest) and, in doing so, he invents several classic bits including the "Silly, Isn't He?" routine.'The Heckling Hare' is utter brilliance itself but it builds up to a climax that trumps everything that went before it. Bugs and the dog take the most extended, hysterical nosedive from a cliff you'll ever see in a cartoon. Far from simply waving at the camera and accepting their fate a la Wile E. Coyote, they scream blood-curdling, pleading wails of pure terror all the way down. It's surely one of the funniest scenes in the entire Warner archive and it's only a shame that Avery's boss Leon Schlesinger waded in and messed with his intended ending, which would have seen Bugs and the dog fall off another cliff. Schlesinger ordered that the ending be cut on the flimsy pretext that Bugs' line "Hold onto your hats folks, here we go again" was the punch line to a well-known dirty joke at the time! Schlesinger's cut version is the only one that exists today, meaning that the classic cliff-falling sequence is followed by a ludicrously abrupt ending. It's not enough to spoil such a wonderful short but you can't help but feel Avery and 'The Heckling Hare' deserved considerably more respect. Instead, Avery was fired and went to work for MGM. Although we may wonder what great cartoons he may have made had he stayed at Warners, had he not gone to MGM we wouldn't have the likes of 'Bad Luck Blacky', 'King Size Canary' or 'Red Hot Riding Hood'. For the existence of those cartoons, I guess we can thank the uncompromising brilliance of 'The Heckling Hare' and the audacious ignorance of the interfering Schlesinger!

For years, the only Bugs-Bunny-razzes-hunting-dog cartoon that I knew was "Hare Ribbin'", which I had seen on MGM's video release "Cartoon Moviestars: BUGS!"*. So when I saw "The Heckling Hare", I was just a little surprised that Bugs Bunny had done all this once before. Then again, maybe it shouldn't surprise me that Bugs had done this more than once. After all, Bugs knows exactly what to do in these sorts of situations.Anyway, this one has a hunting dog named Willoughby looking for rabbits and finding Bugs. So, Bugs spends the next couple of minutes playing every possible trick on Willoughby (even wondering what else to do to the poor canine). And no one - not even the audience - is safe from his jeers.All in all, I would say that it was a good end for Tex Avery's Warner Bros. career. One has to wonder what else he would have done had he stayed with WB. I recommend it.*For many years, MGM owned the rights to the pre-1948 Warner Bros. color cartoons. For this reason, the documentary "Bugs Bunny Superstar" was an MGM release. When MGM released it on video in 1988, they also released Cartoon Moviestars collections "BUGS!" (showing Bugs Bunny holding an Oscar), "DAFFY!" (showing Daffy Duck wearing spiffy sunglasses), "PORKY!" (showing Porky Pig driving a fancy car) and "ELMER!" (showing Elmer Fudd sitting in a director's chair). Among the other cartoons on these videos were "The Up-Standing Sitter", "Brother Brat" and "A Pest in the House".