This episode has a good mix of Bugs's antics. Bugs Bunny suffers some indignities and a close shave with death but comes out on top and has the closing one-liner.
The graphics and copy which flash through the episode are hilarious, but easy to miss, starting with Witch Hazel's certificate guaranteeing her identity as a witch and upstanding membership, and which later accords with her comment that she hasn't seen Bugs Bunny, in disguise, at any of the "union meetings".
The reason for the chase and attempted murder of Bugs, all comes down to the witch's Recipe 102, which demands inter alia, swamp water steeped in a skull, a cup of arsenic, diced spider, hornet's heel (3), and a rabbit's clavicle, not foot. Witch Hazel was perfectly willing to co-exist with Bugs, trying to wheedle out his secrets of ugliness, and with attempted reversal of ugliness by a witch's spell, but after all, all's fair in love and witchcraft. It is only that outlandish recipe requirement that leads to the mayhem.
Witch Hazel is a fantastically ugly creature — down to her bulbous nose, the tip of which often creases as it weighs down upon her prominent chin — but you have to study her face.
Her self-conscious laughter at her own running comments is another fine aspect of this episode. For example, after sharpening the knife with which to kill Bugs, she touches the blade, notes that it is "Sharp enough to split a hare". It is not an original pun, but she thinks that it is and then has another giggling frenzy before darting away, leaving a further trail of hair pins in her wake.
Bugs Bunny has frequently had close shaves with death. I'd vote that his tears in this episode were a pre-meditated ruse, even if he were sympathetic and supplied, unknown to him, the 'poisoned' tea to Hazel.
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