Barbary Coast Bunny Explained

Barbary-Coast Bunny
Director:Chuck Jones
Story:Tedd Pierce
Animator:Abe Levitow
Richard Thompson
Ken Harris
Layout Artist:Robert Gribbroek
Background Artist:Philip DeGuard
Starring:Mel Blanc
Daws Butler
Music:Carl Stalling
Producer:Edward Selzer
Distributor:Warner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
Color Process:Technicolor
Runtime:6:49
Language:English

Barbary-Coast Bunny is a 1956 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon short directed by Chuck Jones and written by Tedd Pierce.[1] The short was released on July 21, 1956, and stars Bugs Bunny.[2]

Plot

Bugs is tunneling the cross country to meet his cousin Herman in San Francisco, only to run head first into a large nugget of gold. Nasty Canasta sets up a simple stand claiming to be a banker who can safely store Bugs' gold. When Bugs decides to ask for his gold back, Canasta claims that the bank is closing and traps Bugs in the folded-up stand while he rides away with the gold. Wrathfully, Bugs vows revenge on Nasty Canasta.

Six months later, Canasta has used his ill-gotten gains to start a casino in San Francisco. Bugs enters the casino and confuses a slot machine for a "telly-o-phone". When Bugs uses it to phone his mother for some money, he hits the jackpot, much to Canasta's shock. Trying to recoup this loss, Canasta convinces Bugs to play roulette with a rigged wheel. Canasta covers up the number Bugs bets on with a slab of wood and stops the wheel on another number. However, when Nasty Canasta bangs his fist on the table in glee, this causes the ball to bounce and land into a knothole on the piece of wood, getting Bugs even more. Canasta then proposes draw poker, which Bugs wins again.

Finally Canasta decides to rob Bugs at gunpoint on the pretense of it being another game of chance, namely Russian roulette. Bugs spins the revolver bullet cylinder like a slot machine and a mass of coins inexplicably pours out the gun's barrel.

As Bugs departs with all the casino's funds and more, Canasta dumbfoundedly looks at his pistol, then pulls the trigger in an attempt to make coins ejaculate from the barrel. However, he ends up shooting himself and keels over. Bugs then says to the audience "The moral of this story is don't try to steal no eighteen carrots from no rabbit".

Home media

The short is available on Stars of Space Jam: Bugs Bunny VHS, and on both the fourth volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs and the second volume of the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection DVDs.

References

  1. Book: Beck . Jerry . Friedwald . Will . Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons . 1989 . Henry Holt and Co . 0-8050-0894-2 . 288.
  2. Book: Lenburg . Jeff . The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons . 1999 . Checkmark Books . 0-8160-3831-7 . 6 June 2020 . registration . 60-62.