The Cuckoo Clock

A cat is driven crazy by a bizarre cuckoo bird from the clock. Try and try again, the bird gets the best of the cat--who only wants to eat him and have some peace and quiet. The plot, despite the description on IMDb, is MUCH simpler...and a bit different. I would have actually liked it a lot more had it been more like the weird description.

Tex Avery's cartoons for MGM are absolute gems--and are among the best shorts ever made. The problem is that he didn't make more!! They had a level of zany surrealism that put them in a class by themselves. However, I must also admit that although "The Cuckoo Clock" is quite good, it's amazingly tame compared to many of Avery's other cartoons with the studio. Good...not great.

Certainly what is most interesting in this short cartoon is its rare immersion in a dark and Gothic universe more associate with the psychological dramas of the previous decade (a mansion, a tortured main character) as with Poe's short story in which is informally based. At same time it could be inspired by a prior free short cartoon version of Poe's tale produced twenty years before - "The Cuckoo Murder Case" by Ub Iwerks. Avery tone of course is more subordinate to the generic conventions of the cartoon universe of its time, as show the fast reorganization from its uncommon prologue to more usual clichés of the cat-search-a bird in a Sylvester-Tweety style. Curiously, only 3 years after, a more radical and credited version of Poe's tale - "The Tell-Tale Heart", by Ted Parmlee for UPA Studios would be made. Anyway, it is noticeable the interesting solution Avery uses to adapt the clichés of cartoon universe to show the split personality of his psychotic feline in the beginning.

Well, maybe it was one of his poems. This Tex Avery cartoon about a cat driven mad by the cuckoo in a clock is a typical series of gags linked by Daws Butler's narration of the cat's state of mind, using the same echo filter that the popular radio show INNER SANCTUM used to lend a weird feeling to the proceedings.

I'd like to rate this one higher, but it falls into the typical range of Avery works: a very funny series of gags on a theme until the cartoon's seven minutes are up, punctuated by running out of the growth serum or here, swallowing some of the immense supply of TNT that every cartoon character always keeps a liberal supply of.

This is Tex Avery doing a parody of Edgar Allan Poe. A cat is going insane with fear. It's the cuckoo clock and it must be stopped.

This is great fun. It's a 6 minute short. I kept thinking that this would be perfect for Tweety Bird and Sylvester the Cat. Also Vincent Price would be the best narrator. I don't recognize these characters. The cat is similar to many other cats. I don't think I've ever seen the bird before. I love the thumb bit. I love a lot of these gags. This is great.

This short is typical Avery, with lots of sight gags and a hilarious premise. But Avery plays around with a series of gags that take expressions of speech and depict them literally in visual gags, an idea he would use to base an entire short on later with Symphony in Slang. Cute cartoon, not terribly innovative, but enjoyably watchable nonetheless. Worth watching and recommended.