No, this is not another Looney Tunes take on the Robert Louis Stevenson story. Instead, this is another Bugs Bunny and Tasmanian Devil short. I'm not the biggest fan of Taz. He was a pretty one-note character and was probably best served as a one-off foil for Bugs. But he was brought back a few more times in the classic era and then, of course, found popularity during the modern era because...well, let's just say tastes changed and leave it at that. Anyway, pretty standard stuff for a Bugs/Taz short. The cartoon starts with Taz rampaging through the jungle and all the terrified animals running for their lives. All except Bugs, who finds himself alone with the Devil. Compare this to Taz's first appearance in Devil May Hare, which starts with pretty much this same routine but with drastically better animation. Not that this animation is terrible. For its time, it's actually not bad. I certainly appreciate the bright colors, as often during this period the colors were muddy and cheap-looking. So the animation isn't bad but it's a pale shadow of what it was a decade before. Also, if you see Devil May Hare you don't really need to see this. So go watch that instead. This is the kind of cartoon with lame gags like Bugs holding up a Picasso-type painting in front of Taz and telling him it's a mirror, which leads Taz to think he must be sick. All the gags are corny like that. Anyway, watch it if you're a Bugs or Taz completist but don't expect much. It's worth mentioning that this was the last appearance of Taz until the 1979 TV Christmas special Fright Before Christmas.

. . . in one of three interesting quirks from the 1960s Bugs Bunny "Merrie Melodies" animated short titled DR. DEVIL AND MR. HARE. When Bugs, as a German shrink (the second of an eventual four different medical guises assumed here by the wily rabbit), closes up shop at 5 p.m. and "mails" the Tasmanian Devil in his attaché case, the Devil eventually explodes out of the large metal postal receptacle seconds later covered with travel stickers for leading WWII Losers Germany, Japan, and Italy, along with their notable collaborators Spain, Paris (representing Vichy, France), and "Don't-fly-over-us-to-bomb-Hitler" Sweden. Secondly, this Bugs of the 1960s already was Politically Correct enough to know that it would insult those with I.Q.'s of less than 40 to tag someone such as Forrest Gump as a "moron." To avoid such a Faux Paw, the resourceful rabbit refers to the Tasmanian Devil as "what a maroon." Finally, in a somewhat lame final sequence, Bugs' fourth medical get-up of this story turns out to be a surgeon's green scrubs, as he operates on Dr. Frankenstein's monster (who seems to be more of a scary, clanking metal robot than a corpse patchwork). Dr. Bugs refers to it as "Frankie," applying the creator's name to Dr. F.'s creation (a common error).

I am a fan of Bugs Bunny and of Looney Tunes, so I did like Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare on the whole, though it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I can't say I am a fan of the Tasmanian Devil, though I don't hate him either, but I do agree that he is quite limited here. Yes he gets to grunt and growl, but he hardly does anything interesting here. Also I had mixed feelings on the animation, the backgrounds and colours were handsome enough and Bugs was animated fine, but the Tasmanian Devil isn't as successful, being a little too forced in the movements and was I imagining things or was he changing colour on occasions(ie. brown to grey)? The pacing was quite leisurely in comparison too. That said, the music is fine, very rousing and energetic, Bugs's dialogue is witty, fresh and funny and the gags especially the ending are amusing. While Taz was on the bland side, Bugs was great as usual, while Mel Blanc's voices are stellar. Overall, decent if lacking that extra something. 7/10 Bethany Cox

This is the fourth and last Bugs versus Taz done in the 1960s and is almost as good as the first one was. Although most of the gags are visual (including the closing one, a very good one indeed), there are verbal jokes as well and the dialogue is good. They made relatively few of these, I suspect because Taz's motivation was limited and therefore there wasn't anything they could do here that wasn't being done (to better effect) with the Wile E. Coyote and the Road-Runner series of cartoons. This one's very good and the ending is very funny (unless you're Bugs Bunny). Recomended.