More Sax and Violins in the Movies
“Musical Moments Week” plays another tune with today’s installment, “Hep Cat Symphony.” The basic conflict here is a favorite in old time cartoons: classical music vs. jazz. The studios cranked out oodles of films pitting lovable hipsters against stodgy old guard types, with predictable, toe tapping results.
But “Hep Cat” is an anomaly in the sub-genre, because this time the longhairs are the good guys. In a nutshell, the plot has an entire mouse symphony orchestra driving a jivey feline soloist quite literally off the deep end by pounding out the classics. The cat certainly is multi-talented (is there any instrument he can’t master?) but pretty darn intolerant of the traditional stuff. When things start getting nasty, the mice resort to a very kinetic rendition of that old standby, the William Tell Overture, which some how or other involves a lot of objects sent flying in the general direction of the aforementioned kitty cat.
When Seymour Kneitel directed this Noveltoon for Paramount/Famous Studios, he wasn’t afraid to use the ‘head-gets-flattened-like-a-pancake’ gag twice in the same picture (Hey, it was funny the first time…)
Catch ReFrederator on the flip side tomorrow, when we deliver one more melodic masterpiece.
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On June 1st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Am I the only one who wanted the mice to get silenced? I was totally digging the cat.
On June 2nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
Yeah, when the cat starts scatting, then gets interupted by the mouse orchestra, you kinda go “Awwww…” I think its interesting that the cat seems to have two voices; the ’speaking’ voice (Jackson “Bluto” Beck) and a ’singing’ voice (um, somebody else)