Switchin' Kitten

I'm going to put this as politely as possible! IT SUCKS! Seriously had Gene Dietch ever even seen a Tom and Jerry cartoon?! Boy did he really mess it up. This is simply just a horrible short! I'm glad Chuck Jones later took over and fixed things up!

Zero(0)out of 4(****)stars

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!

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 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.