utgard14 As other reviewers have noted, this is one the of the few duds in the classic Looney Tunes era. It starts with Bugs being chased by Elmer, then falling into an underground cave. In the cave he finds an ancient film reel, which he takes home and watches. The film is a documentary from 10,000 BC and features a caveman version of Elmer hunting a sabre-toothed rabbit version of Bugs. Very corny. Mel Blanc's voice work is fine but Elmer sounds like he has a cold, due to his being voiced by Dave Barry instead of Arthur Q. Bryan. The stock music is generic and doesn't fit the action of the cartoon well. The animation is not the best, either. The backgrounds are flat and the colors are dull and kind of gritty. The worst offense of the short is that it's just not funny. Every gag and line falls flat. It's hard to believe this is from the 1950s. It's pretty much '60s TV quality. Avoid unless you're a Bugs completist.

TheLittleSongbird I know that sounds harsh, but considering Bugs and Elmer were here I expected better than this. Granted, this is not the worst Looney Tunes have done, and it is not their only bad cartoon, there are about five or six others that range from mediocre to crud-worthy(Devil's Feud Cake and See Ya Later Gladiator are two of those). But, that is little consolation. For me, the only redeeming qualities were Mel Blanc and Bugs mocking Elmer's laugh, that's it. The animation is dull in the colours, lacking finesse in the backgrounds and the characters especially Bugs look really odd. The music is tepid and annoying, and I hated how it sounded too, canned music can work but I have heard too many cases when it doesn't and this is one of them, while the pace has no energy, the writing is unoriginal and tired with gags that suffer from poor timing and the story is too thin a premise, takes far too long to start and finishes abruptly. Another big disappointment was the voice of Elmer, which to be honest was really quite poor and felt too imitative. Overall, a huge disappointment. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Steve Carras Ian L., not sure if Seely or designated film editor Treg Brown chose the music, though John Seely WAS the boss of the stock music, but seems everybody in the business then worked or moonlighted at various stock libraries, and they were purchased by Seely and his co-producer Ken Nelson at Capitol Records. In addition, of course, there was original music done for Capitol, and here, or "HARE", is where it gets more confusing:A number of different composers-George Hormel, Jack Cookerly, Emil Cadkin, John Seely, Bill Loose, Joseph Cacciola, Spencer Moore, and Seely's successor Ole Georg and such later names as Ib Glindemann were credited writers,but even more----people NEVER credited for some of those. Among those was some A listers-- such as David Rose!!!! Yes, the same one who once married Judy Garland and made all those records!.Mr. "Holiday for Strings" and "The Stripper" himself.According to researcher Paul Mandell, from John himself---David Rose had "written them" but was expected and very graciously;y sold them "rights free and composer free" (and credit-free, as I have pointed out.)Another of those ghost writers was Jack Meakin and there were others. (Meakin became among the more noted, in part for George A.Romero's "Night of the Living Dead")Still also, John Seely was A-not THE-but A distributor of composer Jack Shaindlin's, and possibly Chappell's and various others on their own labels (the composers mentioned above, though only a few wrote original pieces-and boy, did they EVER!-for Capitol, usually had already written for Sam Fox, or Phil Green's solo composition's for UK's EMI Photoplay, and others that wound up in Capitol's connections, and all of this was RELEASED and LABELED as Capitol Hi-Q.)Whew! So in short----suffice it to say that the music came from a variety of sources. To another poster: Well, to be honest, on the music matching up, especially with Milt Franklyn, a lot of the Warner Bros.cartoons made at the time, in 1958, like the previous year's "What's Opera Doc?" that continued to be praised, had music going against the action, and Carl Stalling in the heyday in the pre-1950s years, did it much better.On Elmer Fudd's voice: Neither Mel Blanc nor the radio character actor responsible for the official voice, Arthur Q.Bryan, is used (nor were Daws Butler or Hal Smith, as was assumed in the 1980s.) As probably is already mentioned in the entry credits and the reviews, comedian Dave Barry (not the current humorist!!) tried the hand at doing Elmer's "wewentwess" :) hunter voice, and did it badly,a admittedly. Another irony, Mel Blanc was the narrator heard briefly. More on the stock cues, relevant only to this particular short (WB did five others during that 1958 musician strike, and even some other projects like the "Bell Science", using this):Most of John Seely's Capitol stock music like in the sequence with Mel's narration is from the Dramatic series and adding to the eventual cult status of the library, can be heard (again!) "The Night of the Living Dead" and "MST3K" worthy (Bugs proves himself such by commenting on his stone age counterpart) horror flicks from earlier ("The hideous Sun Demon" and "Teenagers from Outer Space!!"). Incidentally, recognizable stock music is in the second half, though to add to the cartoon's bad reputation, that is where Bugs and Elmer meet-it's the "Eccentric Comedy Suite" by David Rose, which graced many a Ruff and Reddy and Yogi/Huck/Meeces show, and others, contractually credited (see my earliest paragraphs, to John Seely and Bill Loose).The cues were TC-(ThemeCraft) 201, and 300. And that's TC-202 used on the opening. Those number/letter, and in many cases if variants on a cue was done, an addition letter, codes, were used to personalize the publisher-s there's another stock cue used on this, in "Gopher Broke" and THREE times in "Hip Hip Hurry", two others in the Warner Bros. fall 1958 schedule, L-69 Animation Comedy, credited to Zephyr Records producer Spencer Moore. His partner was the separetly credited George Hormel, who used ZR. (Moore had worked at a few other publishing firms.) No doubt this databse and other reviewers will have more information. I got this from odds and ends, including several music blogs, but this is in my words.Incindetally, just rememebred, the entry credits for this will have other names, too. So I'll just leave it here.

ianlueck The Looney Tunes series had very few complete clunkers. Unfortunately, "Pre-Hysterical Hare" was one of the few in that category. And it's not just mediocre; it's a total whiff.The first major problem is that the main premise (that is, prehistoric versions of Bugs and Elmer) takes a good two minutes to get started. By that time, there are room for only a few set pieces before the cartoon abruptly ends. And because the pacing of the gags was slower than in the 40's and early 50's shorts, there are even less gags overall. They really should have started on the prehistoric setting (perhaps with brief narration to describe that the characters are ancestors of the characters we know and love) instead of doing a pointless Bugs/Elmer chase in the present and Bugs discovering and setting up the film reel that showcases the prehistoric Bugs and Elmer.And what we do get is pretty old hat, even for 1958 when the cartoon came out. Ooh, a gag where Bugs blows into the opposite end of a dart gun so that Elmer swallows his own projectile. Seen that before. Then there's a gag where Bugs teaches Elmer how to load a rifle but puts a component on backwards so Elmer shoots himself. Again, nothing unique there. There was also no creativity to Elmer setting a rope trap but Bugs merely pulling the rope so Elmer falls out of the tree.But the worst offense of "Pre-Hysterical Hare" is that it's just boring. For starters, there's no energy to the cartoon. There are a few scenes where Bugs and Elmer just stand around, talking. How exciting. And even the gags themselves are executed in a very listless, tired manner. The other reason the cartoon's boring is that instead of Milt Franklyn's always enjoyable orchestral music, we get a series of stock music pieces chosen by John Seely which don't follow the on-screen action as closely. Bear in mind, I have nothing against stock music; for example, I love the music from Ren & Stimpy, and even some of the music used in the other Looney Tunes shorts with Seely's input is catchy (see "A Bird in a Bonnet" and "Weasel While You Work"). But what is used here is just bland, and doesn't accentuate the gags at all. Even the title card music could put you to sleep.Other problems with this short? There's some brief (yet pretty obvious and jarring) repeat footage from an earlier cartoon, someone else other than Arthur Q. Bryan playing Elmer (and doing a poor imitation at that), a prehistoric Bugs design that isn't really much different than the modern Bugs design (only changes are longer teeth, bad posture, and slightly more shaggy fur), and a glaring goof where Bugs doesn't move his mouth when saying a line. No, I doubt it's an internal monologue, because his lips were moving just a couple seconds earlier.There's one decent joke in this cartoon, and that's Bugs mocking Elmer's trademark laugh. But it comes at the very end of the short, so by then, it's too little, too late. Overall, "Pre- Hysterical Hare" has a "phoned in" feel that doesn't even come close to taking advantage of its prehistoric setting, which is a shame because Bugs cartoons are often some of the best in the classic cartoon library, and Robert McKimson (who directed this) has done better with the character than this. Worth a look for morbid curiosity, but definitely not one you'll be re- watching over and over.