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Director: Seymour Kneitel
Release Date: October 30, 1959
Stars: Herman & Katnip
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Katnip’s Big Day’ was the last of the Herman and Katnip cartoons. Fittingly, it’s a cheater, a compilation cartoon with Katnip looking back on his not too illustrious career in a ‘This is your life’-like television program.
Katnip sits on a throne and is visited by his old ‘pals’ Spike, Herman’s cousins (whose names are revealed to be Rubin, Dubin and Louie), Buzzy and Herman himself. They all reminisce how they tricked the poor cat in earlier cartoons, which lead to excerpts from ‘A Bicep Built for Two’ (Spike, 1955), ‘Cat-Choo’ (Buzzy, 1951), ‘Drinks on the Mouse’ (Rubin, Dubin & Louie, 1953) and ‘Mousetro Herman’ (1956).
What the cartoon manages to demonstrate is that Herman and Katnip never were really funny, but that only three years before they at least were well animated. Compared to the archive footage the animation of the actual cartoon looks terribly stiff, lifeless and cheap.
Watch ‘Katnip’s Big Day’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Katnip’s Big Day’ is available on the DVD ‘Herman and Katnip – The Complete Series’
Director: Seymour Kneitel
Release Date: April 3, 1959
Stars: Herman & Katnip
Rating: ★★
Review:
With ‘Fun on Furlough’ Herman and Katnip return to the department store scenery of ‘From Mad to Worse‘ (1957).
This time Herman’s cousins are having fun at the toy department until Katnip almost catches them. Then Herman enters, who inexplicably has a three days leave from the army. He reveals that Katnip once had been in the army, too. What follows is a chase sequence with an army theme, using toy soldiers, a toy tank, a toy plane etc. The idea already is preposterous, and the follow-up is hampered by trite and formulaic gags.
Watch ‘Fun on Furlough’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Fun on Furlough’ is available on the DVD ‘Herman and Katnip – The Complete Series’
Director: Seymour Kneitel
Release Date: February 20, 1959
Stars: Herman & Katnip
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘Felineous Assault’ is Famous studio’s variation on Tom & Jerry’s ‘Professor Tom‘ (1948): Katnip teaches his nephew Kitnap how to catch mice.
When Kitnap passes the test with a fake mouse, Katnip orders the little one to catch Herman. But inside the mouse hole Kitnap gets stuck and Herman rescues him. What follows is one long chase sequence in which Katnip tries to catch Herman, while Kitnap makes him fail.
Herman is pretty helpless in this cartoon, which is hampered by angular designs (especially on Katnip), and by stiff and schematic animation. In fact, the little kitten looks and moves better than either Herman or Katnip.
Watch ‘Felineous Assault’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Felineous Assault’ is available on the DVD ‘Herman and Katnip – The Complete Series’
Director: Seymour Kneitel
Release Date: January 2, 1959
Stars: Herman & Katnip
Rating: ★★½
Review:
This cartoon centers on a small owl who starts sleepwalking during daytime. To save him from certain death Herman takes the little fellow home and christens him ‘Hootie’.
Unfortunately, Hootie immediately starts walking out of Herman’s lair to make a nest on Katnip’s back. When Katnip discovers the bird, he tries to catch it and eat it. What follows is a chase cartoons that gets complicated by the fact that Hootie may be blind and helpless during daytime, he sure can see when it’s dark en then he suddenly changes into a violent foe to Katnip.
‘Owly to Bed’ contains one of the most violent takes on Katnip: during one scene we watch him being split in two by Hootie’s axe, and trying to put himself back together again. More interesting than either the violence or the chase, however, is the music that accompanies Hootie’s sleepwalking.
Watch ‘Owly to Bed’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Owly to Bed’ is available on the DVD ‘Herman and Katnip – The Complete Series’
Director: Seymour Kneitel
Release Date: August 29, 1958
Stars: Herman and Katnip
Rating: ★
Review:
‘You Said a Mouseful’ builds on two ideas: Katnip suddenly is an Italian chef, making pizza, while Herman runs a gym for mice, to keep them in shape enough to escape the cat.
Unfortunately, little Chubby hardly cooperates, eating everything in sight, and Herman has to rescue the brat repeatedly. Surprisingly, in the end little Chubby saves Herman by telling Katnip they’re Italian, too, and the cartoon ends with Katnip and the mice dancing around a pizza.
There’s very little to enjoy in ‘You Said a Mouseful’. Chubby is clearly modeled on Nibbles, the hungry orphan mouse Jerry adopts in the Tom & Jerry ‘The Milky Waif’ (1946), and who appeared in ten cartoons in total, up to 1957. Chubby hardly shares Nibbles’ charm, however, and the cartoon is hampered by rather cliche chase routines. Little is done with Katnip’s sudden Italian roots, except for him singing in mock-Italian. The whole cartoon looks like a poor man’s Tom & Jerry short.
The best gag may be when Katnip lures Chubby with help from a very large spaghetti string, the most violent one is when Herman puts Katnip’s hands into a toaster. This makes a painful watch indeed.
Watch ‘You Said a Mouseful’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘You Said a Mouseful’ is available on the DVD ‘Herman and Katnip – The Complete Series’
Director: Isadore Sparber
Release Date: March 14, 1958
Stars: Herman and Katnip
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘Frighty Cat’ revisits the premise of ‘From Mad to Worse‘ (1957) and mixes it with the idea of the Tom & Jerry cartoon ‘Fraidy Cat‘ (1942).
Nobody knows why (it’s completely irrelevant to the story), but the setting is the Illside sanatorium, where Herman and his cousins play pool. Then Katnip arrives and manages to trap the four mice in a mouse hole. He decides to ‘wait them out’, while reading a ghost story aloud. This, of course, prompts Herman and his kin to play tricks on the cat, making him believe the house is haunted. In the end Katnip flees into the distance, haunted by his own ghostly image in a mirror.
Even though ‘Frighty Cat’ is one of the more entertaining of the latter day Herman and Katnip cartoons, it’s difficult to praise the cartoon, as it completely fails to live up to its peers (apart from ‘Fraidy Cat’ ‘Mouse Wreckers‘ from 1949). The animation is often subpar, and Herman looks quite misshapen at times. At least some of the background art is nice.
Watch ‘Frighty Cat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Frighty Cat’ is available on the DVD ‘Herman and Katnip – The Complete Series’
Director: Dave Tendlar
Release Date: November 22, 1957
Stars: Herman and Katnip
Rating: ★
Review:
‘One Funny Knight’ takes place in mystical medieval times.
Herman works as a servant in a tiny medieval castle in a forest. When Katnip kidnaps ‘beautiful’ princess Guinevere, Herman comes to the rescue. Rather incongruously, Katnip is dressed in 17th century style, and rides a scooter to his own, much larger, castle, followed by Herman on a bicycle.
There is more melodrama than humor in ‘One Funny Knight’, which makes the cartoon a rather boring watch. Nevertheless, there are some nice perspective stagings.
Watch ‘One Funny Knight’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘One Funny Knight’ is available on the DVD ‘Herman and Katnip – The Complete Series’
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’
Director: Seymour Kneitel
Release Date: September 18, 1942
Stars: Superman
Rating: ★★★
Review:
No sooner were the Fleischer brothers removed from their own studio, or their stars Superman and Popeye were fully put to the war effort.
No other American cartoon stars featured in as many propaganda shorts fighting the foe. Superman stars in five, of which ‘Japoteurs’ is the first.
In this entry three Japanese spies try to steal the world’s largest bomber on its test flight. Of course, Lois flies along, and both she and the plane have to be rescued by Superman.
‘Japoteurs’ is an unfortunate cartoon, which adds to the idea of a fifth column of Japanese within The United States, making every Japanese person suspicious. Indeed, due to this type of paranoia, during the war no less than 110,000 Japanese Americans, including women and children, were put into internment camps.
This is Superman film No. 10
To the previous Superman film: Terror on the Midway
To the next Superman film: Showdown
Director: Isadore Sparber
Release Date: September 4, 1942
Stars: Popeye, Bluto, Olive Oyl
Rating: ★
Review:
Popeye and Bluto are on a battle cruiser stationed somewhere in the South Seas.
There they meet a ‘princess Alona’ (Olive Oyl in a sarong). Her parrot warns the two suitors that if the princess get’s harmed, the volcano will erupt. In the end all turns out to be just a dream.
In this cartoon the comedy is mostly silent, and princess Alona doesn’t speak at all. Unfortunately, Jack Mercer’s jabbers are absent, too, and they are certainly missed. The result is the weakest Popeye cartoon in years.
Watch ‘Alona on the Sarong Seas’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This Popeye film No. 110
To the previous Popeye film: You’re a Sap, Mr. Jap
To the next Popeye film: A Hull of a Mess
Director: Dan Gordon
Release Date: August 7, 1942
Stars: Popeye
Rating: ★★
Review:
‘You’re a Sap, Mr. Jap’ is the first Popeye short by the Famous studio, after Paramount had taken over business from the Fleischer Brothers.
This film is immediately the most vicious propaganda film in Popeye’s career, and one of the most extreme cartoons of the entire World War II era. In it Popeye encounters some vicious caricatures of Japanese who doublecross him while suggesting to want to make peace. Their small boat turns out to be on top of a giant battleship which Popeye defeats singlehandedly. The cowardly admiral then commits suicide by drinking nitroglycerin and eating firecrackers, destroying the whole ship.
‘You’re a sap, Mr. Jap’ is as propagandistic as it is ferocious. In the Fleischer’s ‘Fleets of Stren’th’ from five months earlier, the enemy was still rather abstract, but in ‘You’re a sap, Mr. Jap’ the Japanese people themselves are attacked. The film was the first, but not the only one to feature extreme caricatures of Japanese, which in this cartoon are killed by the dozen. Later, cartoons like ‘Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips’ and ‘Commando Donald’ (both 1944) would follow suit.
These cartoons mark a clear difference between the two enemies: the Germans and the Japanese. While the Nazis were always portrayed as silly, the German people were almost never seen in cartoons, and when shown, they were regarded as victims of their leaders, like in ‘Education for Death‘ (1943). The Japanese, on the other hand, with their less visible regime, were treated as one and the same, from the military top to the average soldier. No doubt, a sizable dose of racism accompanied this view. And it’s views like this that resulted in the arrest and internment of American Japanese, something that also happened to Germans living in the United States, but on a much smaller scale…
In ‘You’re a sap, Mr. Jap’ the anti-Japanese sentiment results in a remarkably unfunny cartoon, and the short is more famous for its lack of politic correctness than for its humor.
Watch ‘You’re a Sap, Mr. Jap’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This Popeye film No. 109
To the previous Popeye film: Baby Wants a Bottleship
To the next Popeye film: Alona on the Sarong Seas
Director: Dan Gordon
Release Date: April 26, 1943
Stars: Superman
Rating: ★★★★★
Review:
The Superman cartoon ‘Jungle Drums’ blends the war theme with the adventure setting of ‘The Mummy Strikes‘.
This time the setting is a vague African island, populated by scary natives who are under control of some mysterious Nazis. They shoot an American plane out of the sky, which contains Lois and some secrets concerning the American fleet. While the natives try to burn Lois, Clark Kent/Superman only arrives just in time to save her.
Superman beats the Nazis, while Lois warns the US Air Force against Nazi submarines threatening the fleet. The last shot is that of an angered Hitler listening to the radio how his plans were frustrated.
Although this short, like most Superman cartoons, contains a weak and badly build story, it stands out for its great shots of scary natives, with their original camera angles, stark color designs and large shadows. The end result is arguably Superman’s best film.
Watch ‘Jungle Drums’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Superman film No. 15
To the previous Superman film: The Mummy Strikes
To the next Superman film: Underground World
Director: Isadore Sparber
Release Date: February 19, 1943
Stars: Superman
Rating: ★★½
Review:
With ‘The Mummy Strikes’ the Superman series entered the realm of the adventure movie, albeit with rather unsuccessful results.
One doctor Jordan is mysteriously killed in the museum and Clark Kent is invited to investigate the murder. Lois follows him secretly. After a very lengthy explanation, four gigantic mummies come to life, but Superman defeats them in an all too short battle. This finale is not in proportion to the boring explanation scene preceding it.
In all, ‘The Mummy Strikes’ is one of the weaker entries in the Superman series, because of this ill-constructed story. Luckily, Superman’s next adventure, ‘Jungle Drums‘, would be much better.
Watch ‘The Mummy Strikes’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Superman film No. 14
To the previous Superman film: Destruction, Inc.
To the next Superman film: Jungle Drums
Director: Isadore Sparber
Release Date: December 25, 1942
Stars: Superman
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘Destruction Inc’ was Superman’s third war cartoon, after ‘Japoteurs‘ and ‘Eleventh Hour‘ from earlier that year. Like ‘Japoteurs’ it features saboteurs on American soil, a paranoid idea, well-fed by government propaganda.
This time the danger comes from the inside: some American gangster saboteurs threaten a munition plant. Lois discovers them at a factory, but she’s captured and put inside a torpedo. Luckily Superman is in the neighborhood, not as Clark Kent, but as an elderly general. However, he only arrives just in time to rescue Lois from a certain death in a short that belongs to Superman’s more entertaining films.
‘Destruction, Inc’ opens with a shot of someone being murdered. Such a shot would open the next film, ‘The Mummy Strikes‘, too.
Watch ‘Destruction, Inc.’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Superman film No. 13
To the previous Superman film: Eleventh Hour
To the next Superman film: The Mummy Strikes
Director: Dan Gordon
Release Date: November 20, 1942
Stars: Superman
Rating: ★★★
Review:
‘Eleventh Hour’ is Superman’s second war cartoon, after ‘Japoteurs‘ from earlier that year. It’s one of the earliest World War II cartoons dealing with Japan.
In this short Superman himself is the saboteur, destroying ships, bridges, airports and tanks in Yokohama, Japan. The furious Japanese capture Lois, who stays with Clark Kent in Japan, and threaten Superman to execute her if he doesn’t stop his sabotage.
Superman reads this ultimatum all but too late and he’s only just in time to rescue Lois from the firing squad. Lois returns home, but Clark Kent stays behind, implying that Superman keeps on doing his sabotage work, a message that must have been comforting to the home-front.
The story of this cartoon is quite original, if not very well-constructed. Unfortunately, by now Superman has been reduced to an expressionless figure, making him a boring character to watch.
Watch ‘Eleventh Hour’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Superman film No. 12
To the previous Superman film: Showdown
To the next Superman film: Destruction, Inc.
Director: Isadore Sparber
Release Date: Oct 16, 1942
Stars: Superman
Rating: ★★★★½
Review:
In an original twist to the Superman formula, a sneaky fake Superman steals jewelry for his gangster boss.
Meanwhile Lois and Clark have to report an opera performance. Luckily, the fake superman is there, too, pickpocketing the attendants. Superman captures his look-alike and his boss.
‘Showdown’ clearly has the most original story line of all superman cartoons, and this makes the short arguably the best entry of the series. At least the cartoon contains the funniest line in the series, when Lois makes Clark Kent the sarcastic remark “fine Superman you‘d make”.
Watch ‘Showdown’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Superman film No. 11
To the previous Superman film: Japoteurs
To the next Superman film: Eleventh Hour
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 