Movies: Merrie melodies

It's Christmas Day in the home of Granny, and her pet cat Sylvester delights at chasing her new Tweety Bird and takes fright at the bulldog unwrapped from under the tree....

Bugs challenges Cecil Turtle to race, only this time he's wearing an aerodynamic suit like Cecil's. Unfortunately, the gambling ring has bet everything on the rabbit, and Bugs now looks like a tortoise....

This was the debut for Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. It was also their only cartoon made in the 1940s. It set the template for the series, in which Wile E. Coyote (here given the ersatz Latin name Carnivorous Vulgaris) tries to catch Roadrunner...

Elmer Fudd is again hunting rabbits - only this time it's an opera. Wagner's Siegfried with Elmer as the titular hero and Bugs as Brunnhilde. They sing, they dance, they eat the scenery....

Speedy comes to the aid of a group of mice trying to get the cheese from a factory guarded by Sylvester....

Elmer is hunting both Daffy and Bugs again. Bugs talks Elmer into going after Daffy, who ends up getting the worst of all the pranks....

Elmer Fudd introduces two pieces of classical music: "Tales of the Vienna Woods" and "The Blue Danube", and acted out by Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Laramore the Hound Dog, a family of swans, and a juvenile Daffy Duck....

Little Henery the Chicken Hawk wants to prove he's big enough to hunt chickens, but he doesn't know what a chicken is. He labels Foghorn Leghorn a loud-mouthed shnook and dismisses him, prompting Foggy to indignantly try to prove he's a chicken and t...

Failed hunter Elmer Fudd laments that he's never able to catch the rabbit (Bugs Bunny); just then a bolt of lightning strikes, and the voice of God takes him through a flash-forward to the year 2000. Elmer and Bugs, now both elderly, look back to whe...

Daffy attempts to convince Porky, as Friar Tuck, that he really is Robin Hood....

A cosmic mix-up results in a Martian baby being delivered to Earth, while an Earth baby is sent to Mars. Joseph Wilbur and his wife try to raise the green-skinned, ingenious Martian tyke as if he were an Earthling. But the kid builds his own spaceshi...

A sneaker-wearing, hairy monster chases Bugs through a castle belonging to an evil scientist....

I Love to Singa depicts the story of a young owl who wants to sing jazz, instead of the classical music that his German parents wish him to perform. The plot is a lighthearted tribute to Al Jolson's film The Jazz Singer....

Yosemite Sam tries to force Bugs Bunny to do a high-diving act when the regular act cancels....

Thomas the cat finds Tweetie in the snow, warming himself by a cigar butt. Thomas's mistress rescues the little yellow bird before her cat can devour him, but Thomas doesn't give up....

A very tired businessman needs some sleep and checks into a hotel run by Elmer Fudd, where Daffy Duck is the bellhop....

Bugs tells stories to his nephew Clyde derived from earlier cartoons ("Baseball Bugs", "Stage Door Cartoon", "Rabbit Punch", "Falling Hare", and "Haredevil Hare")....

The Coyote makes various attempts to get the Road Runner with an explosive-tipped arrow, by shooting himself out of a sling shot and by covering the road with quick drying cement....

In the Western town of Rising Gorge, Bugs faces off against Yosemite Sam, "the roughest, toughest, he-man stuffest hombre who's ever crossed the Rio Grande."...

A tuxedo-clad wolf Master of Ceremonies announces the evening's program: the tale of the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs, set to the music of Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dances. Queue the fairy tale....