Transylvania 6-5000 (1963) is a short Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Chuck Jones and starring Bugs Bunny. 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.
Plot[]
Bugs ends up in "Pittsburghe Transylvania". Initially he asks a two-headed female vulture ("Agatha" and "Emily") for directions to "Pittsboig", but the Agatha and Emily busy talking about eating him. Bugs sees an old castle nearby, mistakes it for a motel, and calmly approaches it. Bugs meets a vampire, who introduces himself as Count Blood Count and invites him in. Although Bugs is only looking for a telephone to call his travel agency, the Count leads him to a guest room beckoning him to rest.
Unable to sleep, Bugs picks up a book titled "Magic Words and Phrases", and despite his initial skepticism about their effect, he reads it. Later the Count sneaks up behind him and is just about to strike when Bugs says "abacadabra", turning the Count into a bat. Bugs mistakes the bat/Count for a big mosquito and clobbers the bat with a fly swatter. As the bat dizzily flies out of the window, Bugs says "hocus pocus", which turns the Count back into a vampire and fall into the moat surrounding his castle. Agatha and Emily wonder what specimen the Count is.
Shortly afterward, while Bugs is searching for the house restaurant, the Count sneaks up from behind again, but Bugs is humming to the tune of "It's Magic" and inadvertently turns the Count back into a bat. Once again mistaking the bat for a mosquito, Bugs sprays the bat with a fumigator. As the bat/Count is hanging his head down from an archway, coughing insecticide out of his lungs, Bugs sings "hocus pocus" during a continuation of his song, and the Count crashes to the floor on his head.
Fed up with the situation, the Count reveals his true identity to Bugs, resulting in a duel of "magic phrases" in which Bugs transforms into a baseball umpire. After he turns himself into a baseball bat to hit the bat-vampire on the head, Bugs gets the best of the Count throughout the duel by causing him to be crushed repeatedly by a stone slab. By mixing the magic words to "abraca-pocus" and "hocus-cadabra", Bugs causes the Count to become a mixture of human and bat body parts. Afterward he uses "Newport News" and turns him into Witch Hazel. Unimpressed he uses the incantation "Walla Walla, Washington", and the Count is turned into a two-headed male vulture. Bugs calls out to Agatha and Emily and the Count is horrified to find himself the object of their amorous pursuit. The Count flees the castle with the female vulture in pursuit as Bugs watched in amusement. Then Bugs finds a working pay phone (in a coffin), but while waiting for the operator to reach his travel agency in Perth Amboy, he mumbles "abraca-pocus", and his ears turn into bat wings. Bugs hangs up and decides to fly home with those wings.
Characters[]
Cameos
- Witch Hazel