Don't Believe the Hype

A lot of fun.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It's nighttime, time for everyone to put their cats outside. Porky Pig tries it and gets nothing but resistance from his four felines. This becomes the premise for "Kitty Kornered", a wonderful cartoon featuring some of the wildest, wackiest animation imaginable, thus making the characters flexible and rubbery. That can only mean this cartoon was directed by "Mr. Wacky" himself: Robert Clampett! My favorite sequences from this cartoon include the following (DO NOT read any further if you have not yet seen it). A snooty butler rolls out a carpet & pillow and then relinquishes his elegance by giving his feline a mighty kick! Porky pulls one of his cats out of a mouse hole, and the cat in turn pulls a few yelping mice out of the hole; after the cat gives Porky a poke in the eyes (Bob Clampett must have been a fan of the Three Stooges), the cat & mice transform themselves into billiard balls. AND, in a couple of references from the 1944 Warner Bros. live-action feature film "Arsenic and Old Lace", all four of Porky's cats disguise themselves as Teddy Roosevelt and lead a charge up the staircase; and a very mean-looking Porky quickly draws open the curtains while his felines are drinking, smoking, and eating chocolates."Kitty Kornered" is a fine Porky Pig cartoon with a bit of a surprise - an early version of the ugly, slobbering cat Sylvester. All he needed was to be paired with a baby canary or a Mexican mouse and he was in business!

It's evening and homes all over the US are putting out their cats for the night. However when Porky Pig attempts to put out his litter he finds that Sylvester is leading a revolution that tries to change the socially accepted order of things!Starting out with Porky being thrown out into the snow by his cats, this cartoon is a battle of wills between Porky and his cats, led by the despicable Sylvester. The various rouses they all pull are all funny and the `alien invasion' broadcast is a nice throwaway reference to Orson Welles' reading of War of the Worlds! The gags all work well and things are lively.The characters in the leads really drive the cartoon. Porky is very animated and funny, while Slyvester is the best of the cats – who, aside from him, are merely sidekicks. Overall I enjoyed the short and it had plenty of gags and imagination – Sylvester is in particularly good form.

Bob Clampett was at his creative height and his last year at Warners when he directed this cartoon. The plot involves Porky Pig trying to put his four cats out for the night (one of the cats is an early version of Slyvester). Several scenes parody Arsenic And Old Lace and the Orson Welles' radio play of War Of The Worlds. Everything gels together very nicely in this one; the jokes come fast and furious, the timing is razor sharp, and the art direction, use of color and camera compositions all greatly enhance the scenes. A special standout is the animation, though. It is suitably exaggerated and there are several great eye-popping "takes." The rest of the animators on Clampett's team had finally caught up to Rod Scribner's style of cartooning at this point. (Rod Scribner was one of Clampett's head animators and was instrumental in breaking the Warner cartoons away from the stultifying and literal "realistic" animation of the day to a looser and more expressive style.) A very funny and energetic cartoon that for some reason has hardly been shown on T.V. Highly recommended!

That about says it - only Clampett would have booted-out house cats try to scare their way back into the nice warm house by convincing their master (in this case, a terrified Porky Pig) that the Earth is being overrun by Martians! One of the best double-takes ever.