Gato Embrujado

Tom and Jerry in a haunted house… sounds like fun. Except that isn't what this is. Instead, Jerry gets a visit from yet another friend/relative, this time a magician/hypnotist who uses his uncanny powers on the cat whenever he causes the mice trouble.

Once again, Chuck Jones seems to have no feel for what is right in a Tom and Jerry cartoon, with the most ridiculous idea being Jerry's elevator in the fridge (which is almost as daft as the swimming pool in The Brothers Carry-mouse-off). I remember the good old days when all Jerry had was a sardine tin for a bed (I guess he must have won the lottery).

By now, I've gotten used to Jones' style of animation on T&J, but that doesn't mean I like it, and the same goes for the humour, which cannot hold a candle to the early Hanna-Barbera/Fred Quimby cartoons.

This was my second look at a mid-1960s Tom and Jerry and I thought it was just as bad as the other cartoon I had seen ("Is There A Doctor In the Mouse?") Well, from now on I'll know enough to stay away from T&J cartoons made in the '60s. They not only are amateurishly drawn, they aren't funny, either.

Jerry has a magician-mouse friend of his come to visit. He can do all kinds of tricks and he shows some of them off to Jerry by just a click of his fingers. One thing that was a cool: Jerry has an "elevator" in his mouse-hole home, one floor taking him right up into the refrigerator. That was the only neat thing of the cartoon,

Tom later goes after Jerry but winds up with the wrong mouse and is hypnotized by him. However, nothing much is done. The whole story is very slow with little happening.

In summary: skip it; it stinks.

First things first, I love Tom and Jerry. I love the animation, the characters, the music, the humour and the chase sequences. Haunted Mouse however is one of my least favourite Tom and Jerry cartoons. Granted, it is not as bad as those abominable Gene Dietch cartoons, but I have to say this is very predictable and bland even for Tom and Jerry. Starting with the good things, I liked Jerry's friend and the concept and the inside of the fridge was beyond cool. However, the animation is pretty bad, one of the worst-looking Tom and Jerry cartoons I think. The colours are okay, but the backgrounds are static and Tom looks really odd and his smile really creeps me out. The music is rather generic, and the sound effects are nothing great. But the biggest problem is that the story is very badly paced and so predictable that next to none of the sight gags work. Overall, disappointing, perhaps worth a look if only once but strictly speaking for the real thing watch the cartoons of the 40s and 50s a vast majority of those are classics. 4/10 Bethany Cox