Hare-Way to the Stars
 |
| Hare-Way to the Stars | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Chuck Jones |
| Produced by | Eddie Selzer |
| Animation by | Richard Thompson Ken Harris Abe Levitow Harry Love (special animation effects) |
| Layouts by | Maurice Noble |
| Backgrounds by | Philip De Guard |
| Color process | Technicolor |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation |
Running time | 7 minutes |
Hare-Way to the Stars is a 1958 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes theatrical cartoon short, starring Bugs Bunny, and released on March 29, 1958. The title is a play on the song "Stairway to the Stars".
Plot
The cartoon starts when Bugs Bunny, feeling the effects of mixing radish juice with carrot juice the night before, unknowingly climbs out of his hole and into a rocket ship that is about to be launched into space. He realizes what has happened once he screws open the tip of the ship, and is immediately hit by the satellite Sputnik and lands on what appears to be a space station. While there, Bugs meets Marvin the Martian who is trying to blow up earth with the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator (in reality a stick of dynamite, it is also the same device he tried to use in his debut short Haredevil Hare, though that Space Modulator was Uranium rather than Illudium) because "it obstructs [his] view of Venus".
Bugs quietly steals Marvin's explosive and after hearing no explosion, Marvin says one of his trademark lines "Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!". Marvin then discovers that the explosive has been stolen by "That creature" and uses different tricks to try to catch Bugs and get the explosive back, including using ‘just add water' Instant Martians (who somewhat resemble the Martians of A Martian Odyssey) to chase Bugs around the space station and catch him. Bugs tricks the Instant Martians into flying off the road and falling through a trap door. Bugs then steals one of the Martian's spaceships, and while flying by, swaps the explosive he stole from Marvin for the bottle of Instant Martians. The explosive is lit, and soon explodes in Marvin's hand (destroying his space station in the process) before Marvin can finish saying its name. Marvin concedes that it is "back to the old drawing board" while Bugs is flying back to Earth. When Bugs arrives at Earth, he crashes into a construction site warning sign and finds himself and the bottle of Martians falling into the sewer. The Martians begin to grow as Bugs climbs out of the sewer, frantically replaces the manhole cover and warns the audience to "Run for the hills folks, or you'll be up to your armpits in Martians!" before taking his own advice as the ground shakes with the invaders underneath.
Availability
The cartoon was featured on the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 1 Blu-ray box set (released November 15, 2011) with the cartoon restored and in high definition. This cartoon was also made part of the feature film The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (sometimes known as The Great American Chase), and Bugs even remarked that "old Chuck seemed detoimined to get poor little old me into outer space, too!".
Notes
- The "Instant Martians" resemble the alien from Jupiter in the Porky Pig cartoon Jumpin' Jupiter from three years earlier.
- This cartoon was featured in the 1979 animated film The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, which included a 30-second Star Wars opening crawl parody that reads: "A long long long long long long long long long long time ago.... In a universe far far far far far far far far far far far far away..... Whew!".
External links