Director: Seymour Kneitel
Release Date: August 16, 1957
Stars: Herman and Katnip
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘From Mad to Worse’ takes place at a department store, where Katnip is a night guard.
We watch Herman and his cousins playing with a toy train in the toy department. When Katnip tries to catch them, Herman and his fellow mice play tricks on the cat, making him think he has gone mad, much like Hubie and Bertie did to Claude Cat in the Chuck Jones cartoon ‘Mouse Wreckers‘ (1949). Katnip even goes to a psychiaCATrist (got it?).
Compared to Chuck Jones’s cartoon, ‘From Mad to Worse’ is a rather tiresome experience. The short is surprisingly dialogue-rich, hampering the gags, and in this short Herman ‘quotes’ Confucius twice, turning into a stereotyped China-man while doing so. The animation is full, but mediocre. In fact the cartoon’s highlight is the cartoon modern background art, especially the background paintings of the first scenes are very beautiful.
Watch ‘From Mad to Worse’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘From Mad to Worse’ is available on the DVD ‘Herman and Katnip – The Complete Series’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 
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September 18, 2019 at 16:36
Irven Kleene
Famous Studios cartoons depress me, because they boasted so many talented crew members that are wasted on such weak stories and rather tight animation budgets. Worse, the Famous cartoons have terrible sound effects, which, unlike those heard in the Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM cartoons at the time, get old pretty fast.
‘From Mad to Worse’ was the only short featuring Harvey-related characters to be fully animated by Tom Johnson’s unit, which consisted of Frank Endres and Wm. B. Pattengill. Sadly, there was worse to come when Paramount decided to slash the budget the very same year this cartoon was released.
This cartoon is better than the miserably unfunny Robert McKimson short, ‘Gopher Broke’ (1958), which was unfortunately penned by Tedd Pierce, but not by much. Herman and Katnip deserve better material as opposed to being formulaic knockoffs of Tom and Jerry.