Let's Watch This: "Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales" (1979)

In the 1970s and 1980s, Warner Bros. churned out a lot of television specials starring the Looney Tunes characters. Most of these were really just compilations of pre-existing shorts with new animation acting as a framing device (for example, 1981's Bugs Bunny: All-American Hero featured shorts like Yankee Doodle Bugs, Bunker Hill Bunny, and Southern Fried Rabbit). In fact, one of them, 1977's Bugs Bunny in Space, didn't feature any new animation at all!

But, some of these specials actually DID consist of completely original animation. The special that we're looking at today, Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales, is one of them.

This special premiered on CBS on November 27th, 1979. It was directed by Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng. I watched it back in 2016 (I was on a bit of a Looney Tunes kick at the time) and recall finding it okay. Now I'm going to watch it again. Because 'tis the season. Let's get started!

We start off with Bugs (Mel Blanc, of course), Porky Pig (Mel Blanc), Elmer Fudd (guessing Mel Blanc but he doesn't have any solo lines so it's hard to tell), Yosemite Sam (Mel Blanc), Foghorn Leghorn (Mel Blanc), and Pepe Le Pew (Mel Blanc) singing "Deck the Halls". This actually brings up a common complaint I've seen about modern Looney Tunes productions - they portray the characters as buddy buds. People look at productions like Space Jam or the Christmas albums and go "why are they all acting so chummy with each other? Since when are the Looney Tunes friends? Don't most of them try to kill each other?". Well, as this special shows, this isn't entirely new for Looney Tunes. Heck, remember 1956's A Star Is Bored, which portrayed Bugs, Daffy, Sam, and Elmer as Animated Actors? I think it's reasonable to assume that the characters get along fine "off-camera".

Speaking of Daffy, I should probably bring up that he doesn't show up in this special at all. Maybe he flew south for the winter or something? Marvin the Martian doesn't show up either.

Elmer looks high as a kite right now, doesn't he?

After that, we get our first short - a retelling of A Christmas Carol. Sam is Scrooge and Porky is Bob Cratchit... a role he'd also play in 2006's Bah Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas (but we'll look at that one another time). Bugs barges in to greet Sam... I mean, Scrooge... eh, what the heck? I'm just calling him Sam... a Merry Christmas, to which Sam goes into a rant about how much he hates Christmas and kicks Bugs out. On the one hand, Bugs did barge in uninvited (Fred at least had the excuse that he was Scrooge's nephew. What's Bugs'?) so I can understand why Sam was annoyed, but Sam didn't have to make such a big deal about it.

So as you might have guessed, Bugs decides he's going to go all "Of course you know this means war" on him. Also, Sylvester (Mel Blanc) is in this short too. He's Sam's cat, but really doesn't have much of a role. In fact, I think he only has one line. Dunno why they even bothered to include him, but I guess they had to find a place for him in the special SOMEWHERE.

Don't you hate it when you come into work and somebody's wearing the
exact same outfit as you?

Bugs' way of getting back at Sam is to... put a piece of coal in the fireplace so Porky is warm, then invite in carolers. That's it? THAT'S how you're gonna put Sam in his place? Come on, you're BUGS BUNNY! Can't you at least stick dynamite down his pants or something?

Sam is so enraged to have carolers in his place of business that not only does he throw them and Bugs out, but he also fires Porky even though Porky had nothing to do with it. Jeez, Sam...

After that, Porky invites Bugs back to his house for Christmas Eve dinner. He's introduced to Mrs. Cratchit, played by Petunia Pig, Tiny Tim, played by Tweety Bird (Mel Blanc), and two kids who don't get names. I'm going to assume that Tweety was adopted since he's the only member of the family that isn't a pig.

There have been shorts where Sylvester was Porky's pet. Why not make him the
Cratchit Family's pet? Or did they just think it'd be disturbing having him try to
eat Tiny Tim?

Some guy shows up at the door with a message from Sam - he's foreclosing the pigs' mortgage and he wants them out of the house by midnight. I bet he also punted puppies into the Grand Canyon and set fire to a building for the heck of it, that Sam. Bugs vows to teach Sam a lesson he'll never forget.

Over at Sam's house, Sam gets in bed, and we discover that he has the ability to talk without moving his mouth. But then, he hears Bugs and the carolers again, and he runs outside to beat them up... only to wind up slipping on the ice and into a snowbank. Again, this seems very tame for Bugs. Then Sam makes himself a hot bath, but Bugs peeks in through the window and fills the bathtub with snow, so when Sam jumps into the bathtub, he gets a nasty surprise. Okay, that's a little better.

So now's when Jacob Marley and the three ghosts show up, right? Well, no. I guess the writers couldn't think of a way to make the past, present, and yet to come stuff funny, so we don't get any of that adapted in this short. I dunno, I think they could've found a way. They could've had Daffy and Marvin be two of the ghosts as a way to work them into the special. The third ghost could've been... I dunno, Pete the Puma? Beaky Buzzard? Gossamer?

But nope, instead we get Bugs dressing up in a sheet and dubbing himself the "Ghost of Christmas".

Wheeeeeeeeeeee...

After some WHACKY SHENANIGANS, Bugs tells Sam that he's going to send him to that dark, fiery place for being such a horrible person. Sam promises to become a better person, puts on a Santa suit, and runs outside to give money to the poor. He also gives Porky his job back offscreen.

The next short stars Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. We see them lurking outside the pigs' house (which is pretty creepy now that I think about it), then Wile E. chases the Road Runner into the desert... or at least I think it's the desert. I'm pretty sure deserts don't have gigantic snow-capped mountains.

Then again, I've never been to a desert so what do I know?

Wile E. reads in a book about road runners that they hate cold and snow and are easy to catch in snow drifts. So all he has to do is chase him up to one of those snow-capped mountains we saw before and he'll be able to nab him, right?

Oh, who am I kidding? Wile E. will never catch that bird. With his luck it'll probably turn out that the book was written by somebody who knew absolutely nothing about road runners.

And here's another interesting fact about road runners: they're immune to literally
anything that the ACME Company makes. I think one short actually revealed that the
company was owned and operated by the Road Runner.

Instead of, as I suggested, just chasing the Road Runner up to one of those snow-capped mountains, Wile E. decides to buy an ACME snow-making machine. It actually works... but it keeps dumping the snow onto him. After the fourth time, Wile E. goes "to heck with it" and dumps it into a canyon. But it STILL dumps snow on him, and the combined weight causes the cliff he's standing on to fall off and send him into the canyon. It's funnier than I made it sound, trust me.

So THEN Wile E. decides to, y'know, just get the Road Runner up to the snow-capped mountains somehow. But apparently that book was indeed a load of baloney, as the Road Runner can run just fine in the snow. Eventually Wile E. pursues him onto a frozen pond, then dons some skates to create a hole in the ice around the bird. You fool. You never do that in a cartoon. It always just results in all of the ice except that circle you carved with the skates falling into the water and YOU falling in instead of what you're trying to make fall in.

Long story short, road runner stays dry and coyote falls into water. And of course Wile E. still hasn't figured out that he should stop buying his supplies from ACME, because we then see him putting on ACME rocket-powered skis.

Seriously, hasn't Wile E. considered that maybe he should try to buy his supplies
from another company?

After that fails, he buys a dogsled and some sled dogs - only to get mauled by them. According to the shipping label, sled dogs LOVE having coyotes for supper. Considering that coyotes are wild dogs, wouldn't that be considered cannibalism?

I looked it up. Apparently, coyotes can eat dogs. Ignoring that it's still cannibalism, if that's the case why doesn't Wile E. just eat the dogs instead of trying to catch the Road Runner? I mean, other than "because the dogs will maul him before he gets the chance".

Actually, Wile E.'s creator, Chuck Jones, provided an answer for this. He dubbed Wile E. a fanatic, quoting George Santayana's observation that "a fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim". By now, he's just so focused on nabbing the Road Runner that it really doesn't occur to him he can find other ways to get food. There was also a scene in the failed pilot Adventures of the Road Runner where the two boys watching the show ask why Wile E. chases the Road Runner in the first place. Wile E. pauses and explains to them (and us) that road runners are, to coyotes, the tastiest things on the planet - complete with a handy chart.

Okay, now back to the cartoon. Wile E. rides a rocking horse and tries to lasso the Road Runner - doesn't work. Next he tries a giant snowball, but that idea is a bust too. Guess poor Wile E.'s only hope is that Santa brings him some road runner cold cuts for Christmas.

The next segment features Bugs' little nephew, Clyde (June Foray). This actually is not the character's first appearance, as he previously appeared in at least two Bugs Bunny shorts beforehand. However, this special certainly made him a lot cuter.

Cartoon characters in footie pajamas are always cute.

Also appearing in this segment is the Tasmanian Devil (Mel Blanc), who finds himself at the North Pole while the airplane he's in flies over it. He winds up in Santa's suit, then in Santa's sleigh. The very confused and/or frightened reindeer take off.

I mean, there's no way that the reindeer actually looked at this beast and thought,
"Yep, that's definitely Saint Nick"... IS there?

Meanwhile, Bugs is reading his nephew 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. Suddenly, he hears a noise on the roof - it's Taz and the sleigh, and Taz winds up falling down the chimney. It's a little unclear whether or not Bugs actually thinks Taz is Santa or if he's just trolling him (I'm guessing the latter), but either way, he welcomes Taz in and offers him a snack.

If Bugs actually thinks that's Santa, I think he should've put a pair of glasses
on his Christmas list. Aren't carrots supposed to be good for your eyesight?

Oddly, Taz doesn't make the attempt to eat Bugs as he usually does whenever they're in the same cartoon. Instead, he eats a table, a chair, oranges hanging on the tree, some lights, and Clyde's Christmas list. Then he gobbles down a jar full of unpopped corn... right in front of the fireplace. Thankfully, they don't have him blow up like in a certain Larry Doyle-produced short. Then Bugs offers Taz a present, but he has to go outside to open it. I was expecting the present to turn out to be a bomb or something, but instead, it's a self-inflating life raft. Says so on the box. But Taz still eats it, because as we all know he's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

Taz goes into orbit, and Clyde is bummed that Santa didn't leave him any presents in his stocking. Bugs reassures him that when they return his sleigh to him, he'll be so grateful that he'll give Clyde enough presents to put Toys R Us to shame.

"Eat your heart out, Jack Skellington!"

And so the special ends with Bugs and the others doing some more caroling, now aboard a Taz-pulled sleigh... which Taz promptly eats.

What's the Verdict?

I personally liked Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales as a whole, but it definitely got better after the first segment. The Christmas Carol re-enactment was a big missed opportunity. So much of it is wasted on Bugs giving Sam a hard time, it almost felt like the writers forgot what story they were adapting for a while and then realized, "Oh, crud. We forgot the ghosts." It's also the least funny of the three segments. The Wile E. Coyote / Road Runner and Taz segments fare better. They aren't the funniest Looney Tunes shorts ever made, but they're certainly good for a few chuckles. Also, I wish Daffy at least made a cameo, but that's a small thing.

Next review: Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas (1999)