TRANSYLVANIA 6-5000
Transylvania 6-5000 (1963) is a Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Chuck Jones and starring Bugs Bunny. It is notable as the last original Bugs Bunny short Jones made for Warner Bros. Cartoons before leaving for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to found his own studio, Sib Tower 12 Productions. Bugs demonstrates how to handle a pesky vampire with six simple magic incantations. The title is a pun on “PEnnsylvania 6-5000”, a song made famous by Glenn Miller and referring to the old telephone number system of an “exchange” of two letters plus a digit, instead of a three-digit exchange (i.e. PE6-5000 vs. TR6-5000). Voiced by: Mel Blanc as Bugs Bunny, Ben Frommer as Count Bloodcount, and Julie Bennett as Agatha and Emily, the two-headed vulture. (More from Wikipedia)
I was amused to see that one of the song titles on the Silencers album Cyclerific Sounds is “Abracapocus”, a scramble of “Abracadabra” and “Hocus Pocus” that is taken from a memorable Bugs Bunny cartoon, Transylvania 6-5000. This 1963 cartoon – which features a vampire named Count Blood Count – is notable as the final Bugs Bunny short made by Chuck Jones in his 30-plus year career at Warner Bros. Studios before leaving to form his own animation company. (In earlier years, he was credited as Charles M. Jones). The title is adapted from a Glenn Miller hit, “Pennsylvania 6-5000”, and a comedy/horror movie called Transylvania 6-5000 came out in 1985.
(December 2014)
