Switchin' Kitten

Tom and Jerry is my Favorite Cartoon series of all time, Chuck Jones' Cartoons are my Favorites Along with Hanna Barbera's and what to say about Gene Deitch...

After 1954 the Tom and Jerry Cartoons gave their animation a slump as they were too Expensive to Produce, so the Method continued until William Hanna and Joseph Barbera ended their series of Shorts in 1958 with the Infamous " Tot Watchers" a mediocre short that did not have the same production quality as the previous ones but seemed decent enough to rate it a 6.

After the End of the Original Series in 1960, they hired the Czechoslovak Studio "Rembrandt Films Productions" with headquarters in Prague and at the hands of Eugene Merril Deitch, better known as Gene Deitch and William L. Snyder, this Studio that same year won an Oscar for the great Short Film "Munro" which seemed decent enough to deserve its Award, as for the Animators I had no Idea of the Original Characters, since Tom and Jerry had never been broadcast in Czechoslovakia besides they did not know the Characters They didn't know how to speak English!

These problems were made worse since these animators also had no idea of Comedy Short Films since they were more Accustomed to different Short Films, with more Complex Stories, when in Tom and Jerry it is a Simple Story but well handled. The humor was degraded a lot since they didn't know much about the humor of the Americans, so they included scenes of "Comic" Violence that sadly turned out to be Unpleasantly Horrible.

And in 1960 the Short Film "Switchin Kitten" arrived, well actually it arrived in 1961 but the copyright was from the year 1960, a Short Film destroyed in Critics but well received Economically, many hate it even one of my favorite critics "The Little Song Bird "I brutally criticize it for very Bad things, and I understand it, the short film is bad but it is not so Bad to label it as the Worst of the Series, for me the Worst would be "High Steaks" but that Short Film will have a separate review, this short As I said before, I don't think it's as bad as others from this same era, but it's not the Best of this Era either.

The Animation is a Massive Downgrade from the Original Shorts and Even the Animation of the Latest Hanna Barbera Shorts was much better, the Movements are Jerky and very Choppy, the Backgrounds are Decent but the Animation Doesn't Help, the Colors are Very Gloomy and Too Dark to look Good, the Animations being the First Tom and Jerry Short of this Studio is Too Ugly and the Designs are Deformed too much by the simplicity of the design to the Point that they look Completely horrible.

The Music is too different from that of the Original Series since Scott Bradley was a Composer of First Category Who Composed in a Phenomenal Way, but it is not that the Music of this short is bad, instead of it I quite like it despite of its Strange and Unpleasant Tone but it is also not as good as Scott Bradley's but if it manages to be Quite Decent and Fits in many scenes, Vaclav Lidl Regrettably Did Not Compose The Remaining 12 Shorts Of This Era But Stepan Konicek Replaced It With Even More Music Bizarre but just as decent.

The Voice Acts are horrible (no offense to Allen Swift) since they are only Horrible Screams to the Ear, his Interpretation as the Mad Scientist is so Bad that it made me laugh at how bad it is, but that does not take away that it sounds Horrendous and very, very Inferior to the Brilliant Performances of the Original Series.

The Sound Effects are just as horrible as the Voice Acting, Being Metal with screeching sounds that make my stomach churn, they sound Too Horrendous and are poorly Synthesized.

Itself "Switchin Kitten" is a mediocre short full of errors but despite that I came to like it, since it was not as mediocre as Tot Watchers since this one is more entertaining due to its slow rhythm than after it gets fast, the Animation and Effects Involuntarily manage to be funny in itself, it is not the best of Deitch and not Joke the Best of the Series, but a Quite Passable one and better than the Next 8 that Follow it, for everything I said previously to I give this short a 7.

This premiere episode of the Gene Deitch era of Tom and Jerry scores major points for its nice backgrounds and story. Where this episode fails is in its execution. The events of the story unfold in a very boring way and the animation is very poor. The character designs of our titular duo are horrendous in most instances. A few fleeting moments in the short , they look just like their Hanna Barbara counterparts. The music by Victor Little (aka Vaclav Lidl) is a triumph and far superior to that of his replacement on this series. Stephen Konicek. All gags in this episode fall flat except for that strange flower gag.

In the early 1960s, some evil trolls at MGM decided to revive the Tom and Jerry series but wanted it done with practically no budget at all. So, the cartoons were farmed out to be done in Czechoslovakia by people that had hardly any notion of who the characters were. As a result, they didn't look all that much like Tom and Jerry and they acted nothing like the originals. Apparently, the staff hadn't really seen the cartoons before but that didn't stop them! This cartoon isn't interesting at all. In fact, it's downright boring. And its production values are abysmal. It's really a shame as classic Tom and Jerry cartoons of the 40s and 50s were great cartoons. MGM in 1960-61 chose to abandon its fans and serve up this horrid mess! For shame, MGM.

Three years after shutting down their animation department, MGM contracted studio Rembrandt Films to produce thirteen Tom and Jerry shorts, all to be directed by Gene Deitch, the first of which was Switchin' Kitten, in which Tom pays a visit to a creepy castle where a mad scientist and his mouse assistant (Jerry) perform mind-swapping experiments on animals.

Produced on a tight budget, Deitch's animation is much cruder than that of Hanna and Barbera, with jerky movement and backgrounds rendered in a simpler style; also serving to make the films less satisfying than its predecessors is the sparse soundtrack that consists of bizarre electronic sound effects with heavy reverb.

Switchin' Kitten features some nice ideas (I like Tom being sucked through the glass scientific equipment, and his discovery of the subjects of the scientist's previous experiments), but lacking the charm and sophistication of Hanna-Barbera's work, Deitch's cartoon is, for the most part, quite painful to watch (and listen to).

This is the first cartoon released outside of the Hanna Barbera productions - and boy did they shoot them far outside. For the next 13 entries, Tom and Jerry would be thrust into much different inhomogeneous surroundings, looking a bit different (heading in the direction of stylized UPA toons) and definitely sounding different with a new spacey soundtrack featuring lots of echoey sounds, springs, bleeps and zaps. Yes they are not the same as the HB ones and many can't seem to accept that - but I find them weird and wonderful! Even as a child, I remember being able to discern that these cartoons stood out as strange and unusual from the rest. And I certainly like them better than the Chuck Jones years were he makes Tom look like The Grinch.

This premiere outing takes place at a remote mountain top Gothic castle, complete with a very mad, mad scientist and his laboratory - where all kinds of weird experiments take place. He switches the brains of a cat and dog and this results in a would-be foe becoming a fierce protector of little Jerry from Tom's attempted attacks. Lots of sci-fi gags and medieval meanderings make this one a must for fans of the horror/sci-fi genre and a very cool one to dig out at Halloween season. Check it out!