A Gruesome Twosome

A lot of people dislike Tweety because they consider him too cute. If only they knew about his first few appearances! In cartoons like "A Tale of Two Kitties" and "A Gruesome Twosome", the little guy was the meanest SOB (son of a bird) imaginable. In this case, two cats try to win the heart of a woman, but Tweety always interferes...in the most sadistic way possible.

Yes, Tweety did not start out as the daintily attractive character known to most people today. I believe that he started heading in that direction once they gave him feathers. You see, the studio heads alleged that he looked naked. However - as Bob Clampett pointed out in "Bugs Bunny Superstar" - in all those years, they never noticed that Porky Pig walked around with no pants.

Anyway, this is a funny one.

A Gruesome Twosome is a hilarious Looney Tunes short. Besides, the great animation, it has classic cartoon violence (falling from high altitude, being shot with a gun). The orange cat is a hilarious caricature of Jimmy Durante. This was an early appearance of Tweety, considering the way he was drawn. Thumbs way up.

Two cats fight over a pretty female feline. That's the simple story in this Looney Tunes animated short. One of the cats is a parody of Jimmy Durante, complete with his famous "inky, dinky doo" line. He's the orange one. The yellow one, the one with the Brooklyn accent who says "goil" instead of "girl," is his competitor.

"Durante" uses all his lines and speaks in humorous rhyme while wooing the girl. The lines he uses are really dated and funny. After some fighting, the bimbo-sounding "goil" cat tells the boys, "Whoever gets me a bird can be my fella."

So, the race begins to get a bird and win the cutie.

Who's the bird? None other that the famous "Tweety!" This is "Tweety," before Sylvester came around. He is a little more sadistic than normal, but still effective

All three of Bob Clampett's Tweety cartoons are well-worth seeing, A Tale of Two Kitties is very good though with a rather still-finding-its-feet feel occasionally, and Birdy and the Beast and especially A Gruesome Twosome are great and rank among Tweety's best ever cartoons.

Tweety himself is great here. While I've always tolerated him better than most, and enjoy most of the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, he is much funnier, better utilised and cuter in his early cartoons. By the late 50s, he'd become little more than a plot device and become useless and annoying, but here he is hilarious, and not only does he look adorable even in 'development' stage but one really wishes that Freleng kept the refreshing anarchic personality that Clampett gave him(some of the early Freleng Tweety cartoons did, but it was completely lost by the mid-50s). The feline Jimmy Durante caricature is grotesque but brilliantly inspired, and his competitor is very endearing for a character as dumb as he is in comparison. The love interest is nothing new, but brings charm to the cartoon.

In A Gruesome Twosome, there is very little if at all to complain about the writing, which is very fresh and witty with Tweety's line being some of the funniest he's ever had which is saying a lot. The gags are very sharply timed and are often hysterically funny, violent they are but in a very fun way and not in a way that's sadistic. The story has so much charm and energy that the lack of originality conceptually is completely forgivable in this case, it isn't always with me but there are reservations depending on the execution. Mel Blanc as ever does an amazing job with the three main characters, bringing so much verve and individuality to each(which always was one of Blanc's strengths as a voice actor), and Bea Benaderet does very well too though not with as much to do.

Mustn't forget the animation or the music either, because both here are outstandingly good. The animation is beautifully drawn and colourful, and does contain some of the most inventive animation of any of Tweety's cartoons. The music is vibrant and characterful, with much of the orchestration being gorgeous and rhythmically the music has so much life. As always with Carl Stalling(with Milt Franklyn as orchestrator), the music matches the action and visuals so well and often adds to them.

In summary, brilliant, the best of the three Clampett-directed Tweety cartoons and one of Tweety's overall best as well. 10/10 Bethany Cox

Bob Clampett's 'A Gruesome Twosome' is the last of a trio of cartoons that I absolutely adore: the early Tweety shorts. Clampett invented Tweety but only directed him in three cartoons before passing the character to Friz Freleng who moulded him into an irritating, cutesy creature who starred in a series of repetitive chase films with Sylvester the cat. Clampett's Tweety was a totally different proposition. An anarchic, shrieking, featherless baby bird whose penchant for extreme violence and sudden hollering contrasts hilariously with his frail stature. 'A Gruesome Twosome' takes a long time to set up its premise of two cats (one a grotesque Jimmy Durante caricature) who are attempting to catch a bird to win favour with a lady cat. These early scenes are funny and extremely violent but things are knocked up a notch when Tweety finally appears. Tweety is in the cartoon for a relatively short amount of time but he makes the most of his brief screen time, torturing a bee and a bulldog in order to rid himself of the cats. Brightly coloured and unusually designed (Clampett's designs here are a throwback to the 30s character designs of Tex Avery, showing Clampett's own status as a cartoon fan), 'A Gruesome Twosome' is a thoroughly grotesque and utterly brilliant piece of work which always makes me sad that there were no more cartoons with Tweety as this cool character instead of the doe-eyed irritant he became.