Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, lays out his views on the very best movie trilogy – and it will surprise you!
By MIKE FRIED
I am often asked what the greatest movie trilogy is. Is it the original Star Wars trilogy, is it the Godfather trilogy, is it Three Colors? Lord of the Rings? Back to the Future? The Dark Knight? The Dollars Trilogy? The Cornetto Trilogy? Ok, definitely not the Cornetto Trilogy.
For me the greatest movie trilogy is the Looney Tunes “Hunting Trilogy” featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck up against Dumb NRA member Elmer Fudd, who only hunts for sport
Why The Hunting Trilogy Is So Good
Rabbit Fire has Bugs and Daffy arguing what season it is. It is incredible how many ways Daffy’s beak can be readjusted by shotgun fire after being fooled by Bugs. And the bullet through Daffy’s hanging scalp is a precious memory from childhood.
Bugs looks absolutely delightful as Lucy Ricardo with a shotgun. Thankfully I did not grow up in a house where our Hanukkah pictures included us holding guns. Is it Duck Season or Rabbit season? Watch it and find out, heh heh heh heh heh.
Rabbit Seasoning has the band back together. Daffy is still trying to get Elmer to shoot Bugs. As Daffy says, “Awfully unsporting of me, but I have to have some fun – and it’s really duck season.” Elmer speaks to Bugs and says, “I haven’t even seen a rabbit yet,” which leads to the greatest cinematic pronoun problem ever. And once again Chuck Jones and the boys have found new and inventive ways of placing Daffy’s bill post-shot: “Never send a duck to do a rabbit’s job”. And the surreptitious boner they give Elmer when Bugs, dressed as a pretty lady, makes his hat stand on end is priceless.
Duck! Rabbit, Duck! takes us back to Duck season and Daffy is hellbent on self-preservation. There’s a bit of discussion as to whether Elmer has a license to shoot a fricaseeing rabbit. It’s Daffy to the rescue because he creates a license; but when asked how to spell fricaseeing, Bugs spells it “d-u-c-k.” Again, those Looney Tunes guys just have their finger on the pulse as to what the season is, whether it’s mongoose, dirty skunk or pigeon. And Daffy’s beak just goes in new and inventive ways.
Rabbit Fire was the first time that Bugs and Daffy shared the screen and it was a legitimate cinematic inflection point as some of the very best Bugs and Daffy cartoons were when they were paired together (the race for the Million Bucks(?) anyone??).
And what is absolutely great about the knuckleheads at the Warner Brothers cartoon department was that they could recycle these plots and still make each one seem as fresh and original as the one that came before.
Hence, this is the greatest movie trilogy.
RABBIT FIRE!
RABBIT SEASONING
DICK RABBIT DUCK
All *****!
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
