Shrunken Cinema/Termite Terrace/Big House Bunny
From Eccentric Flower
Big House Bunny
1948
Summary: Bugs ends up (accidentally) in prison, and keeps escaping despite Yosemite Sam's attempts to keep him there.
Director: Friz Freleng
Writer: Tedd Pierce
Featuring: Bugs Bunny; Yosemite Sam.
Onreel
0:20 Sound cue in credits: A (to my ear slightly odd) version of "Down in the Valley."
0:48 If you are not familiar with the main ingredient in hassenpfeffer, you clearly have not seen "Shishkabugs."
0:57 "Sing Song" prison is a joke on Sing Sing, AKA Ossining Correctional Facility, probably the most famous American prison after Alcatraz.
1:10 Bugs is being especially accurate with "nimrod." Although its more general meaning is now known as something like "idiot" or "fool," it was originally a specific nickname for "hunter" (after the Biblical Nimrod).
1:30 "I'm only t'ree and a half!" is a reference to comedienne Fanny Brice's Baby Snooks routine.
1:39 Sound cue: "I've Been Working on the Railroad."
2:03 Sound cue (as Bugs flies through the air): "Aloha Oe."
3:35 "Get me a mouthpiece!" (lawyer) "I want a hapus corpeus!" Sam means habeas corpus.
4:13 This bit of music is not "Congo," but sounds a whole lot like it.
6:56 A "stool pigeon" is an informer (e.g. a squealer, a fink, a tattletale). Bugs interprets it literally.
Offreel
"The big house" was slang for prison, or at least it was in heaven knows how many gangster films of the era. Most of the other slang in this film is familiar for the same reason (i.e. cheesy movies), but I've explained anyway, on the off chance that you haven't seen any cheesy gangster films.
The noose and electric chair sequences have both at times been cut from television airings by the prudish.
