Better Late Then Never

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Mouse Wreckers (1948) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Mice Bertie and Hubie come to their new home when they notice Claude the Cat, the best mouse catcher out there, is staying there. Together the two try to make Claude think he's crazy so that he'll move out. This here is a minor cartoon that makes for one great ending but everything before it is rather dull and bland. All of the "tricks" being done to the cat are rather blandly done and for the life of me I could never believe that the cat would be dumb enough to think everything that was happening was only a dream. A dumb cat would have fallen for this but apparently this one was a great one so I don't buy it. The ending is terrific as the cat thinks he's in an upside-down room. The payoff to this sequence is enough of a reason to watch the film.

Chuck Jones's Hubie and Bertie shorts generally worked with darker material and 'Mouse Wreckers' was no exception. A relentlessly cruel cartoon, it involves the attempts of two mice to convince an unwitting cat that he is mentally ill. Hiding up a chimney, Hubie and Bertie subject the cat to various ordeals that rudely awaken him from his slumber. Starting small, these pranks build up to an inspired sequence involving an upside down room which just gets more and more confusing. The cartoon ends with the mice taking over the house as the cat cowers in a tree, driven completely insane. Jones's was a master at drawing out the comedy from these morbid scenarios and he manages to make an hilarious film which has a constant sense of unease without leaving a bad taste. The concept of actually having the mice as the bad guys and the cat as a manipulated innocent was a bold and brilliant move. It's worth noting that Jones remade 'Mouse Wreckers' as a Tom and Jerry cartoon named 'Year of the Mouse'. Although I'm not hugely fond of the majority of Chuck Jones's Tom and Jerry shorts, 'Year of the Mouse' is actually fantastic and, in many ways, improves on 'Mouse Wreckers' by making the scenarios more horrifically violent and the ending more satisfyingly just.

I never even knew that the cat in "Mouse Wreckers" was named Claude until I read about it on this site. But either way, Claude really suffers here, as New York-accented mice Hubie and Bertie pull a series of tricks to scare him out of the house. Probably the coolest gags are the stunt with the rope, and then the whole end sequence.Still, I can't help but wonder why it is that cats always have to bear the brunt of abuse at the hands of cartoon characters. It seems like there should have been some cartoon in which a cat makes mincemeat of a dog or something. But still, this is a great one.Claude really could have used some pineapple upside down cake at the end!

This cartoon short, an Oscar nominee, features Hubie and Bert ("Yeah, yeah, sure, sure") tormenting poor Claude for the first time. Poor Clude didn't fare terribly well in any of his cartoons, either with Hubie and Bert or in other cartoons, but this is by far the most devastatingly funny appearance by any of them. You really get to feel quite sorry for poor Claude after a while here. He just happens to be in the way here. He doesn't do anything to deserve this nightmare. He's simply there. Recommended.