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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: Walt Disney
Release Date: December 2, 1929
Stars: Mickey Mouse
Rating: ★★½
Review:
‘The Haunted House’ is Mickey’s first horror cartoon.
In this short he hides from a rain storm in a house, which appears to be haunted by skeletons. A cloaked skeleton orders Mickey to play on a harmonium, while all the skeletons dance.
This sequence reuses some footage of four skeletons dancing from ‘The Skeleton Dance‘. Unfortunately, the new animation on dancing and playing skeletons is hardly as good, and the dancing sequence feels more primitive than ‘The Skeleton Dance’. However, the opening shot is beautiful, with the house flexing in the wind. There’s also some good animation on the cloaked skeleton, and a beautifully lit scene when Mickey strikes a match.
Mickey’s role in this short is very limited, and his only function seems to be being the carrier of the audience’s fear. Indeed, he looks repeatedly into the camera for sympathy, dragging us into the haunted house with him.
The early scenes of this cartoon manage to evoke a genuine feel of horror, but in the end this short resembles the boring song-and-dance-routines of both the early Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony series too much to be a stand out.
Mickey would return to the horror genre in ‘The Gorilla Mystery‘ (1930) and ‘The Mad Doctor‘ (1933), with much better results.
Watch ‘The Haunted House’ yourself and tell me what you think:
This is Mickey Mouse cartoon No. 14
To the previous Mickey Mouse cartoon: Jungle Rhythm
To the next Mickey Mouse cartoon: Wild Waves
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 