Gato Miedoso

Classic Chuck Jones short with Porky Pig and his cat Sylvester moving into a run-down old house. Sylvester soon discovers the house is full of not-so-friendly mice that try to kill them at every turn. This is the first of three cartoons that paired Porky and Sylvester in a spooky place where strange things are happening. The animation is fluid and beautiful with rich Technicolor and well-drawn characters and backgrounds. Excellent voice work from Mel Blanc. Lively music by Carl Stalling. This is a great cartoon with nice atmosphere and lots of humor. Sylvester gets the funniest bits, despite his not talking in this entire short. The mice are a hoot! Love the ending.

Sylvester, minus Tweety Bird, is on vacation with Porky Pig. Porky is oblivious to danger as Sylvester saves him time after time from attacks by adversaries in a haunted hotel. Every time something bad happens, the cat gets the blame. It's a really good romp, full of funny "ghost" scenes.

While not the best of the Looney Tunes canon, it is still enjoyable with a lot to recommend it. The villainous mice could have been developed more, but other than that I had little problem with Scaredy Cat. Porky and Sylvester are both great, especially Sylvester who gets the worst of the scares, particularly the infamous sequence down in the basement, that and the scene after did scare me as a kid. As well as being freaky, there are some funny moments too, slapsticky yes but they were well timed and funny. The animation is excellent, Sylvester is somewhat different-looking, but Porky is drawn very well and the backgrounds and colouring are audacious. The music is both rousing and atmospheric, the dialogue is great, the gags are fine, the story is well-constructed and quite original and Mel Blanc is once again brilliant as both Sylvester and Porky. Overall, not the best but very well done. 9/10 Bethany Cox

In most cartoons starring Sylvester the Cat that are directed by Friz Freling or Robert McKimson, the pussycat is usually the aggressor who's after either Tweety or Hippity Hopper, the baby kangaroo mistaken for a giant mouse either by the red-nosed feline or his son, Sylvester, Jr. In Chuck Jones' Scaredy Cat, he's Porky Pig's mute pet who, despite many attempts of signaling his master of danger, gets admonished as being delusional since Porky always sees something different. This change of characterization is quite convincing in Jones' hands and he stages many scenes of mice about to carry another cat for execution quite atmospheric. The rodents look like Hubie and Bertie, by the way. Quite funny scenes of Porky just being nonchalant almost the whole way when weird things happen behind his back. The ending may be lost to modern audiences but Scaredy Cat is mostly successful in being spooky and highly amusing at the same time.

Scaredy Cat (1948)

*** (out of 4)

Fun Merrie Melodies short has Porky Pig buying a new house but his cat Sylvester is the only one that can see the strange things going on in it. This leads to some misunderstanding as Porky doesn't realize the danger inside the house and Sylvester will have to build up the courage to fight it. This is a pretty good entry in the series as both Porky and Sylvester are at the top of their game. The biggest weakness is that the mice really aren't developed too well so they're only middle ground villains. The best sequence in the movie is when the mice push the bed out the window and Sylvester gets blamed for what follows even though he's just trying to save Porky.