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Reviews
Switchin' Kitten (1961)
A bite-sized piece of what was to come
I seem to remember seeing this short popping up right after the usual run of the 1940-58 Hanna-Barbara films were done, just shy over 20 years ago when I first got the Cartoon Network channel. It was as jarring then as it is now.
Quite a few things wrong with this Deitch cartoon (and same thing with all 13 of them). There's the rough edits and crude animation/art quality usually found in the Deitch T&J cartoons, as well as the amateur SFX (some of it can be unusually loud, some of it is synthesized) and the odd low-volume creepy music (which often resembles a poorly-imitated version of the 1940-58 shorts score, right down to the light-hearted and escalating moments, even doing the Tom and Jerry theme motif, which makes it all of the more disturbing and beyond creepy, also throw in the tense moments which sound downright menacing and evil). It's not as painful as some of the other deplorable Deitch shorts, but still there's something "off" about it compared to the earlier HB and the Chuck Jones shorts. This one threw me off since it seemed innocent enough to appear to be a strange and unusual T&J cartoon, but not of the level of sadism some of the following shorts had that'd be expected of Gene Deitch, but nevertheless, there was something eerie about it. This cartoon starts off with Tom getting thrown out of a passing horse carriage and then entering a stormy Dr. Frankenstein-style castle. Jerry's role consists of being the assistant to the mad scientist of this episode, though the mad scientist seems more of a background character while Jerry being more like Dr. Frankenstein.
It was creepy throughout but not intolerable. Tom wasn't beaten off-screen nor was he nearly maimed on-screen by his Clint Clobber owner in some way, but I can see some of the "force" effects with the screen in this cartoon whenever there's some means of impact or violence that'd be found in the Clobber episodes, it just has an unsettling feel to it, complete with the quiet "BOOM" sound effect as well as several odd synthesized SFX. There's a rather odd scene where Tom is struck in the head rather passively (compared to the Clobber cartoons) by the orange cat that had it's brain replaced by a dog's brain and all of Tom's bones break while the orange cat holds him by the neck, then takes him outside and buries him, which thereby after he "blossoms" out of the ground as a flower.
I give this a 2/10 due to the effort put into the rather high-detailed backgrounds and not having Tom's horrible "Clint Clobber" owner. I hate these Deitch shorts today just as much as I did 20+ years ago, they're the absolute WORST.
I HIGHLY recommend sticking to the classic Hanna-Barbara shorts and even checking out the Chuck Jones ones while avoiding these Deitch cartoons.
Down and Outing (1961)
Pure nightmare fuel
I still won't forget when I was about 11 and being shocked/horrified when the last of the HB shorts played and it moved onto the Deitch ones... More so when it moved onto the Tom's monstrous owner ones. Kind of killed the innocence of the series for me, despite I still adore classic T&J.
The plot is basically a man taking his cat (Tom) along to go fishing and the mouse (Jerry) joins with them, but Jerry causes trouble for Tom as usual.
The first 30-60 seconds seem innocent at first...
Jerry torments Tom throughout the cartoon but leads to Tom striking his owner accidentally or Jerry does something that gets Tom in trouble. Every time Tom does something wrong his owner thrashes him in the head with an object, chokes him, or brutally beats him off-screen (on two occasions). All in a beet-red fit of rage.
Whenever this fat man takes his anger out on Tom, Tom looks like he's in agony and clearly petrified. He seems more fragile than normal. The other two, "High Steaks" and "Sorry Safari" with this owner are just as bad, with the former being just as bad as "Down and Outing", the latter a little less so but still a very unpleasant sit through.
Of the pain gag scenes involving Tom and his owner, all awful scenes:
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* The owner smashes Tom on the head with a frying pan several times after Tom tried to hit Jerry with a frying pan. While doing so, the owner nearly gets into an accident and gets into some brief road rage.
* When Tom tries to grab Jerry, the owner stomps on his paw HARD which swells up red and he whimpers in pain which is followed by Jerry teasing Tom with a first aid kit and when Tom reaches and Jerry cruelly pulls away Tom hurts his injured hand again.
* Tom chases after Jerry outside of the moving car on top and gets stuck in front of the windshield which the owner turning beet-red stomps on the brake and Tom skids across the pavement with his rear catching fire and goes to a nearby puddle to put out the fire evaporating all of the water, which then the owner grabs Tom by the neck and straps him into the front seat.
* Jerry decorates the owner's shoe to make it look like a mouse which after they pull up to the lake and the owner is about to step out, Tom then sees what he thinks is Jerry and strikes the owner's foot with an oar and he yowls up in pain and bends the roof of the car from jumping up in pain. Tom then panics and runs for his life toward the lake and the owner uses the fishing line to snatch Tom which as Tom gets pulled away he looks petrified and in distress/pleading and the owner proceeds to brutally pummel Tom off-screen for a long several seconds.
* The last one shows Clobber punishing Tom by making him carry everything to the boat, as they're both fishing Jerry connects Tom's owner's line to Tom's line and Tom snags something that he thinks he caught a fish and pulls Clobber out from the other side, now hanging upside down, of course as usual he turns beet-red FURIOUS as Tom nervously tries to dry his face yielding a horrifying expression, which again, he proceeds to brutally beat Tom off-screen.
But this time it shows Jerry watching and he actually looked surprisingly shocked, the same thing happens at the end of "High Steaks" to the point of him covering his eyes. Jerry and the owner both catching fish afterward with Tom strapped to the bucket and crying, while the fish being caught slap him in the face and the cartoon ends there...
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The on-screen violence Clobber inflicting on Tom was bad enough, but the off-screen violence in ways might be even worse, since it just sounds like Tom being quite literally torn to pieces or beaten within an inch of his life, all with the bizarre and awful SFX/music. Both the on and off-screen violence felt unpleasant and eerily realistic for a cartoon. Which didn't feel that way with the HB shorts, which were obviously violent, but those were done tastefully and charismatically and were very funny. At times when Spike beat up Tom off-screen it never felt unpleasant. Here, it comes all too close to child and animal abuse territory. You really feel for Tom in the Deitch shorts.
The music is creepy in itself. Kind of low key. They seem to play something similar to the familiar motif of the Tom and Jerry theme at times or whenever Tom's owner abuses him they play some happy/peaceful music right after, which adds to the nightmarish overtone. Whenever the music shifts to a more malicious tone that sounds very similar to what you'd hear in a horror film. Some of the scenes it occurs are when Tom skids along the road, again when he runs for his life before his owner pummels him, or just whenever Tom does something to enrage his owner.
"Down and Outing" and "Landing Stripling" have some music in the beginning of the episode that generates a sense of unease. Like whatever music it's trying to imitate from the HB shorts results in an uncanny, mangled, poor imitation of it.
The sound effects seem amateurish, eerie, tinny, and often have heavy reverberation, nothing that creates the same amusement that the classic HB ones do, but instead leaves a sense of nausea. Both the SFX and music seem disconnected from the visuals of the cartoon with poor timing all over the place.
The animation and art is crude and is often quite abysmal and unsettling, especially the facial expressions which are often very creepy and the stuff of nightmares.
Overall, the worst of the Deitch T&J bunch are IMO "Down and Outing", "High Steaks", and "Sorry Safari". About the only shorts that didn't leave a sense of malaise or a bad taste in my mouth afterward was "Buddies Thicker Than Water" and perhaps "The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit".
Unless you're into shock/sadism humor or pain gags, I HIGHLY recommend steering clear of the T&J Deitch shorts and sticking to the HB shorts from 1940-58 and the Chuck Jones ones.