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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: Chuck Jones
Release Date: July 20, 1940
Stars: Sniffles
Rating: ★
Review:
In the 1930s Frank Tashlin had made the most beautiful cartoons at Warner Bros. When Chuck Jones inherited his unit at the end of 1938, he too made the most beautiful shorts of all.
‘The Egg Collector’ is a prime example, with stunning background art, original camera angles (a clear Tashlin influence), great shading and excellent animation. However, unlike Tashlin’s cartoons, Jones’s were extremely slow. ‘The Egg Collector’, for example , moves at such a sluggish speed, one almost falls asleep while watching it.
The short stars the little mouse Sniffles, Jones’s very first returning character, and his friend, the bookworm from ‘Sniffles and the Bookworm’ (1939). They read in a book about egg collecting, and wish to collect an owl’s egg, not realizing that the fact that eats small rodents means it can possibly eat them. Thus they are on their way to a church nearby, where they soon discover the real nature of the barn owl. There’s little humor in this cute and boring cartoon, although the little owl’s hoots are very charming. The design of the little owl is exactly the same as the one in ‘Little Brother Rat‘.
Carl Stalling accompanies the church scenes with particularly solemn music, based on Felix Mendelssohn’s stage music for A Midsummernight’s Dream. His score rarely sounded so German as it does in this particular short.
Watch ‘The Egg Collector’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘The Egg Collector’ is available on the Blu-Ray set ‘Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles: The Chuck Jones Collection’
Director: Chuck Jones
Release Date: September 2, 1939
Stars: Sniffles
Rating: ★★★½
Review:
‘Little Brother Rat’ is the second cartoon featuring that cute little mouse Sniffles.
In this short Sniffles has to perform tasks at a party. The cartoon opens with Sniffles plucking a whisker from a cat. His second task is stealing an owl’s egg. The egg soon hatches into a little, far from life-like baby owl. The owl appears to be a precursor of the Minah-Bird, Jones’s famous dimension-defying bird, or even Droopy in ‘Northwest Hounded Police‘, as it is as capable of being in unexpected places.
‘Little Brother Rat’ is far from funny, but the night scenes are very beautiful, and Carl Stalling’s score is excellent.
Watch ‘Little Brother Rat’ yourself and tell me what you think:
‘Little Brother Rat’ is available on the Blu-Ray set ‘Looney Tunes Mouse Chronicles: The Chuck Jones Collection’
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 