1. The Big Snooze (7:22)
1946, d: Robert Clampett (NOT CREDITED)
Bob "Beany and Cecil" Clampett's last cartoon for Warner Bros. is not only one hell of an existential swan song, but also further proof that Looney Tunes was a key influence on the evolution of Freddy Krueger's mythology. When Elmer Fudd tires of Bugs Bunny repeatedly steering him off the edge of a cliff, he tears up his contract with Jack Warner. The delicate ecology of Looney Tunes thus upset (what is the hunted without a hunter?), Bugs disrupts Elmer's life of retirement by coating his pleasant dreams with "nightmare paint"--alerting Elmer to the fact that there's no free will in cartoon purgatory.Alternate Audio: Veteran animator Bill Melendez provides vivid descriptions of the working conditions at "Termite Terrace," though all he says about The Big Snooze is that it's pure Clampett. ***1/2 (out of four)

2. Broomstick Bunny (7:09)
1955, d: Chuck Jones
A perennial favourite around Halloween, this reimagining of 1954's Bewitched Bunny (itself prompted by the Donald Duck short Trick or Treat) foreshadows in its wiry backdrops and trichromatic palette Chuck Jones' subsequent collaborations with doodler extraordinaire Dr. Seuss. In fact, if it weren't for Bewitched Bunny, Broomstick Bunny might seem wholly incongruous: trick-or-treating (?) in suburbia (??) dressed as a witch (???), Bugs calls on Witch Hazel (voice of June Foray), who feels threatened that there could be someone out there uglier than she. Bugs' unmasking leads Broomstick Bunny into more familiar cat-and-mouse territory, though because Hazel has an unusually specific motive for running around with a meat cleaver (Bugs isn't a cosmic pest to her, she just needs a hare's clavicle (sheesh) to complete her latest brew), there's attendant nervousness in our laughter.Alternate Audio: Foray's commentary doesn't delve into her initial qualms about playing Witch Hazel (she feared she'd be abetting in plagiarizing Disney) but claims that she served as the model for Hazel's pulchritudinous alter ego. Hubba hubba! Sound effects and Carl Stalling's score are isolated on a second track. *** (out of four)

3. Bugs Bunny Rides Again (7:10)
1947, d: I. Freleng
Disney and Warner both made memorable western cartoons because they could embellish the seething nihilism of live-action oaters without the same fear of recrimination from the Hayes Office. Though Disney's Two Gun Goofy is still my personal favourite of the genre, Bugs Bunny Rides Again, which marked the second appearance of Yosemite Sam, could scarcely get much funnier. Opening with the familiar but never-contemptible gag of anachronistic traffic signals (the ones here used to direct a hail of bullets), the piece finds Sam having run all but the last stubborn citizen--Bugs, natch--out of Dodge. (Friz Freleng excelled at animating mass exodus.) "This town ain't big enough for the two of us," Sam snarls--so Bugs gets out a saw and practises a little urban expansion. The punchline reminds that "release gags" were not Freleng's strong suit, but a feverish card game between the two leads easily atones for any alleged fumbles.Alternate Audio: Background painter Hawley Pratt (later the director of "The Cat in the Hat" TV special) gets his due in a well-prepared commentary from Looney Tunes heir Greg Ford, who lets Freleng explain the genesis of Yosemite Sam via an interview excerpt. *** (out of four)

4. Bunny Hugged (7:13)
1950, d: Charles M. Jones
Grotesque pugilist "The Crusher" is such a fearsome opponent in the ring that his challengers are rolled out on a silver platter. When "Ravishing Ronald" (humorously announced as "a denatured boy") is pulverized within an inch of his life (hoisted on his own hairnet, as it were), mascot Bugs takes matters into his own hands. No one at Termite Terrace drew funnier beefcake than Chuck Jones did, but the appeal of The Crusher is that he's some sort of Toon reckoning: Ravishing Ronald never does regain consciousness, and Bugs is reduced to savagery in bringing The Crusher down. The mildly traumatizing impact of the violence in Bunny Hugged probably makes it a good cartoon with which to turn children off the supposedly imitable behaviour of Golden Age slapstick.Alternate Audio: Sound effects and Carl Stalling's score are isolated on a second track. *** (out of four)

5. French Rarebit (7:21)
1950, d: Robert McKimson
In French Rarebit, we get the Pepe LePew-niverse sans the libidinous skunk, meaning liberal perversions of the French language unfettered by rape subtext. Bugs thwarts the attempts of rival Parisian chefs Francois and Antoine to make a meal out of him by showing them how to prepare "Louisiana Back-Bay Bayou Bunny Bordelaise." The recipe calls for a rabbit, so a couple of Gallic cooks dressed as lapins will have to suffice. Why do turns of phrase like "nom de sad sack" or "hold la onions" guarantee chuckles? Sure, there's a hint of xenophobia in there, but I prefer to think of menu-mangling bourgies as the real target; if you're sitting there stone-faced as "la oven"-bound Francois and Antoine break into "Alouette," chances are you also consider last year's Bon Voyage to be an art film. *** (out of four)

6. Gorilla My Dreams (7:25)
1947, d: Robert McKimson
Bugs floats in a barrel to the ape colony of Bingi-Bangzi, where Mrs. Gorilla, in the throes of baby envy, mistakes him for a delivery from the stork. Seemingly vexed by his wife's blinding hysteria, Mr. Gorilla--an obvious prototype for The Crusher--opens up a can of whup-ass on "Junior." At the halfway point, Bugs does an imitation of a gorilla that brings down the house (Robert McKimson's paunchy Bugs really lends itself to this gag), but ultimately the central conflict is too esoteric to sustain even a 7-minute cartoon.Alternate Audio: Jerry Beck, co-author of the indispensable Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons, sheds light on the pop-culture references destined to sail over the heads of younger viewers and takes inventory of McKimson's stylistic hallmarks. **1/2 (out of four)

7. The Hare-Brained Hypnotist (7:00)
1942, d: I. Freleng
Again Freleng demonstrates little acuity for the release gag, but the way that it ends is hardly the nadir of this disarmingly tame Elmer vs. Bugs curiosity, wherein the then-fairly novel adversaries engage in a literal tug-of-war over Elmer's rifle and a figurative one over Bugs' conscious mind. Freleng would reprise The Hare-Brained Hypnotist's best idea--Elmer getting hypnotized into thinking he's a rabbit--in 1955's deliciously mean-spirited Hare Brush (as yet unavailable on DVD), something that conversely suggests he was haunted by the shortcomings of the piece. ** (out of four)

8. Hare Conditioned (7:15)
1945, d: Charles M. Jones
In all my years of Looney Tunes'ing, I somehow missed this viscerally-charged gem in which Bugs is 'transferred' from "Macey's" [sic] sporting-goods window display to its taxidermy department by the store's sadistic, nay, psychotic manager. If Disney's Bambi was meant to give the lie to Elmer and Bugs cartoons, Hare Conditioned beats Bambi at its own game with a blunt satire of commercially-sanctioned animal slaughter. ***1/2 (out of four)

9. The Heckling Hare (7:25)
1941, d: Fred Avery
In his farewell performance for the studio, Tex Avery fine-tunes the Bugs Bunny persona for his successors. The premise is simple: a bloodhound (voiced by Avery, debuting a take-off on Lennie from Of Mice and Men that would become a chief ingredient in the Looney Tunes well water) sniffs out a puckish Bugs but is overcome with remorse when his rabbit prey plays dead. Though it's a typical Avery cartoon in that the less cinematically savvy may feel a little left out (especially by the funny-for-the-fact-of-itself capper), The Heckling Hare ultimately established more conventions than it tweaked.Alternate Audio: Greg Ford details the incident that led to Avery resigning from the studio and reveals that a debate subsequently transpired among the colleagues he left behind over whether or not Avery was doing better work at new home base MGM."Behind the Tunes" featurette: "A Conversation with Tex Avery" (7 mins.) revives a vintage interview with the animator captured on the Warner lot sometime during the mid-'70s. Therein, Avery reminisces about his tenure under Leon Schlesinger; reflections on his habit of breaking the fourth wall are accompanied by inexcusably unannotated clips, although each animator is identified in an insert photo of the Termite Terrace crew dressed as suffragettes. *** (out of four)

10. Little Red Riding Rabbit (7:04)
1943, d: I. Freleng
For crackerjack timing, Shrek 2 can't hold a candle to this fractured fairy tale, which also happens to be, along with Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves and that Christina Ricci kiddie-porn ballet, one of the stickiest modern adaptations of the oft-told fable. Director Freleng tips his hat to bygone mentor Tex Avery with an homage to The Heckling Hare that works beautifully in context, but the highlight of the piece is its release gag, if you can believe it. Obnoxious Little Red Riding Hood (a brilliant, unbilled Bea Benaderet), who keeps interrupting Bugs' fight with the Big Bad Wolf to fulfill her storybook function, meets a less grisly yet somehow more subversive end than she does at the hands of Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm. ***1/2 (out of four)

13. Slick Hare (7:43)
1946, d: I. Freleng
Never been a big fan of celebrity cameos in animation, since they have a habit of accelerating the ripening process. In Slick Hare, Humphrey Bogart gives "Macrumbo" waiter Elmer Fudd twenty minutes to prepare fried rabbit, and...you know the drill. Old Hollywood may possess a timeless quality that prevents the piece from looking as stale as, say, the Michael Jordan-fronted Space Jam already does, but gags like Ray Milland drinking until he sucks himself through the straw are unquestionably obsolete, not to mention a little easy.Alternate Audio: Michael Barrier tells us that the filthy kitchen seen in Slick Hare was modelled on that of the real Mocambo. Eek. ** (out of four)

14. Baby Buggy Bunny (7:06)
1954, d: Charles M. Jones
"What's up, paediatrician?" Bugs asks what he thinks is a baby left on his doorstep: bank robber Ant Hill Harry has disguised himself as abandoned infant "Finster" in order to retrieve the money that fell down a rabbit hole. If Slick Hare was the inspiration for Who Framed Roger Rabbit's Ink & Paint Club, then Finster must be the antecedent to Baby Herman--and regardless of Finster's biological age, the image of him pointing a gun at Bugs, his "guardian," perfectly encapsulates the anxiety surrounding juvenile delinquency at the time.Alternate Audio: Sound effects and Carl Stalling's score are isolated on a second track. *** (out of four)

15. Hyde and Hare (7:04)
1955, d: I. Freleng
Bugs eludes the alter ego of new owner Dr. Jekyll in this lazy farce, an ersatz Water, Water Every Hare (d: Chuck Jones; available in the first volume of the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection"). Because Jekyll's addiction to the Hyde formula is explicitly tragic (and mirrored, suggests ubiquitous web personality Kevin McCorry, by the junkie's itch that led Bugs to move in with his "carrot benefactor"), Hyde and Hare seems to bite off a bigger allegory than it's willing to chew.Alternate Audio: Carl Stalling's score is isolated on a second track. ** (out of four)