The Last Hungry Cat

Failing to come up with a parody name for Alfred Hitchcock, a silhouetted bear has to suffice without an introduction. This nameless narrator presents a story of ‘Birder': While Granny is across the hall visiting with Mrs. Bitts, Sylvester the alleycat grabs his chance to break into her house and get that Tweety bird. The clumsy cat knocks himself cold and comes to with a yellow feather stuck in his mouth. For some reason this makes him believe he actually got rid of that helpless little blue eyed menace to society (as the narrator puts it).

Back in his dump of a home where everything is run down and askew. (I love the triangular chair), the voice of Hitch keeps reminding Sly of his horrible crime. Newspaper headlines involving a criminal nicknamed ‘the cat' and ominous radio announcements only add to the confusion. The guilty conscience forced upon Sylvester by the bear ensures a greater reliance on verbal gags than usual, but this allows the viewer a deeper insight into the felines tormented soul.

It becomes a bit of a guilty pleasure to see poor Sly being manipulated like this. After all he is only a pussycat. He takes up smoking, drinks pots full of coffee and swallows buckets of sleeping pills. Where he gets all this from no one knows (but I suspect the narrator). He even rubs the little green pills all over himself before giving us his patented 'I'm weak, I'm weak' routine from "Bird Anonymous" (1957). Tweety Pie is hardly in it, but is never missed. When the pussycat finally does decide to give himself up, both he and the silhouetted bear end up with a headache.

8 out of 10

I've known for years that the people behind the classic Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons liked to spoof the popular culture of the era, but I never would have guessed that they made a cartoon parodying "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". Friz Freleng's "The Last Hungry Cat" is it. It starts with a bear entering an outline and explaining what's about to happen. Then comes the story. After Sylvester sneaks into Tweety's room and through a mix-up mistakenly thinks that he's eaten the little guy, he proceeds to go about his normal life. Except that he hears on TV that the police are looking for a killer known as The Cat, and everything reminds him of this. A Hitchcock movie indeed! So, while it is true that the Looney Tunes era was winding down by 1961, they still managed to turn out some good ones towards the end. They knew how to have just the right amount of twisted sensibility without degenerating into bad taste. This is one that you should like. And also watch Hitch's "Blackmail" to get a good feeling for what this cartoon portrays.

It is Tweety Bird and Sylvester the Cat. There is a Hitchcockian narrator. Sylvester sneaks in and tries to eat Tweety. It goes badly and Sylvester gets knocked out. He wakes up and assumes that he did eat Tweety. The narrator accuses him of murder. At first, he is dismissive, but the guilt slowly overwhelms him.

I am fine with the Hitchcock narrator. It could have taken the horror path. Instead, it is going with existential dread which doesn't really fit a cartoon. I would have Sylvester surrendering himself to animal control and he could then be surprised by a visit from Tweety. That would work better.

I you're a Baby Boomer, you have to love this beginning. A bear walks into an outline of himself, doing an imitation of Alfred Hitchcock and the way he always began his "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" dramas on TV in the 1950s and 1960s. After that, this quickly changes to a "Sylvester and ?Tweety" cartoon, with some excellent film-noir-type nighttime light- and-shadows artwork. In fact, this is best-looking Tweety cartoon I've ever seen. It is beautifully drawn.

Hitchcock comes back as Sylvester's conscience, accusing him of killing the poor little bird (which he did not do) and story is kind of weak in the second half. This started off very promising but got a little stupid with not much humor. However, that artwork was so good I gave the story a pass.

The Sylvester and Tweety cartoons while enjoyable as an overall series are inconsistent in quality, there are a handful of great ones and a few lacking ones. The Last Hungry Cat is not quite among the classics but it is one of their better later cartoons and the best of the post-Hyde and Go Tweet(the last "great" cartoon of theirs) cartoons that even non-fans are likely to find something to like.

Some of the second half gets slightly silly and a touch slack pace-wise(compared to the rest of the cartoon) and there are a couple of rough-looking backgrounds, but that's pretty much it for the (minor) flaws. The animation on the whole is absolutely great with a very hauntingly atmospheric noir-ish look to it, it's crisply drawn and some of it even very inventive. One of the better and more interesting looking Sylvester and Tweety cartoons from personal opinion. The music score is lively and vibrantly orchestrated with an appropriate eeriness that pulsates with suspense, in perfect keeping with the Hitchcockian vibe the cartoon has.

The Last Hungry Cat is very funny, with razor-sharp and witty dialogue and inventive gags, and some parts are creepy and suspenseful too without being overly so, considering that it parodies Hitchcock and his famous show Alfred Hitchcock Presents and noir-ish approach this worked absolutely brilliantly. It's also story-wise one of the most inventive and clever of the Sylvester and Tweety series and one of the most tightly paced as well. The characters do a great job carrying the cartoon, Tweety is barely in it but this is a case where it didn't harm The Last Hungry Cat at all because the premise gave him a reason to not be, in some of his later cartoons he had a tendency to be a plot-device with very little to do or funny but not here. The bear parodying Hitchcock is a lot of fun and the interaction between him and Sylvester is a joy but Sylvester makes the biggest impression. He was always a hugely entertaining and interesting character and here is no exception and I felt genuinely sorry for him here as well, more so than many of his other cartoons. Mel Blanc is as always fantastic, and Ben Frommer does a more than serviceable Hitchcock impression.

All in all, not quite a Sylvester and Tweety classic but one of their better later ones and the strongest of the post-Hyde and Go Tweet cartoons. 8/10 Bethany Cox