Pecos Peste

Having seen a lot of these Tom and Jerry cartoons, I usually enjoy a departure from the normal cat-chasing-mouse story, but this one just didn't connect. Once again, Tom suffers needlessly.

The story begins when Jerry receives a telegram one night which reads: "Me and My Guitar On Way To Big City for Television Debut --Stop - Will Spend Night With You, (signed) Uncle Peso"

Soon Uncle Pecos is there, a little guy with a long mustache, sombrero hat, cowboy boots and a two-string banjo. He can't stop singing, "Frog Went A- Courtin," which is going to perform the following night on TV.

The gag of the entire cartoons come next when a string breaks on the guitar. Uncle Peso wakes a sleeping Tom Cat and plucks out one of his whiskers. This happens about every 15 seconds the rest of the way, no matter what Tom does to get away from this maniac.

As mentioned, once again, poor Tom gets hurt while just minding his own business. The stuttering singer Uncle Peso, was cute for a short while but his act grew thin and too much of this cartoon - over half of it - was just him singing that stupid song.

I'm not usually a fan of 'guest' characters in T&J cartoons, who are more often than not unbearably twee, but Jerry's Uncle Pecos (voiced by Shug Fisher) is anything but: when he needs a new string for his guitar, he pursues Tom like an unstoppable Terminator, fearlessly plucking the poor cat's whiskers to mend his instrument. As if this wasn't funny enough, he does so all the while singing a very silly song (Froggy Went A Courting) in a stuttering style that is quite frankly just bizarre. Bizarre and very funny!

To top it all off, there is a delightfully surreal gag at the end of the cartoon where Pecos, performing on TV, breaks another string and reaches out of the television set to pluck Tom's last whisker. Great stuff!

Jerry's Uncle Pecos comes to visit, during which he practices playing for his big moment when he will get to play his guitar on stage in public. Trouble is, he keeps having an accident with the strings (they have a habit of breaking), and this trouble is further enhanced when he finds suitable replacements on Tom's face...

Very funny -- but then would you expect anything less?

This cartoon was the last to be produced by the legendary Fred Quimby. He retired after this cartoon was finished. Hanna and Barbera were to produce the remaining eighteen cartoons they did before MGM pulled the plug on the animation department in 1957.

Jerry the mouse's guitar playing Uncle Peco from Texas comes to spend the night with him before he goes for his big debut on national TV. When his guitar string breaks he just plucks the whiskey of Tom the cat. This happens multiple times. Yea it's pretty much a one-joke premise, but it's pretty entertaining none the less. Perhaps not the best of the tom and jerry shorts, but I enjoyed it enough. Someone should post the lyrics to Peco's song LOL This humorous animated short can be found on disc 2 of Warner Brother's 2-DVD Spotlight Collection set.

My Grade: B-

The story is a little on the predictable side, but this was still very enjoyable. Pecos Pest is very one-joke but it works. Tom and Jerry are both great, but the real star is Uncle Pecos, marvellously voiced by Shug Fisher. Uncle Pecos has a big moustache, an over-sized cowboy hat and plays the banjo while singing constantly at the top of his lungs. The song itself may grate to some people, but I like it, it has a real country flavour to it, as does a lot of the music here. The animation is lovely, and the visual gags all work perfectly.

Overall, Pecos Pest is not the best Tom and Jerry cartoon, but it is a very enjoyable one, that's all that matters really. 8/10 Bethany Cox