Canned Feud

Friz Freleng's 'Canned Feud' is a wonderful solo Sylvester cartoon. I always preferred Sylvester either on his own or paired with anyone but Tweety and this is one of his finest solo performances. Warren Foster's script has the inspirational twist of making a cat and mouse cartoon where the mouse is the bad guy. Sylvester does nothing to deserve the emotional and physical pummeling he gets in 'Canned Feud' and that somehow makes the experience all the more delicious. We share in Sylvester's desperation as he finds himself locked in the house for a fortnight with only canned food to eat, only to discover that a smug mouse has taken the only can opener. Like many of Freleng's best cartoons, 'Canned Feud' is extremely high-energy. Rather than start out slightly worried and build into a frenzy as the cartoon progresses, Sylvester starts at frenzy and builds to complete mental collapse. It's a classic performance by the cat, a masterclass in the art of animated physical comedy. A few fairly standard jokes are given new life by virtue of Sylvester's crazed desperation and there are tons of brilliantly original gags too. The axehead joke is one of my all-time favourites, so beautifully simple and perfectly timed. 'Canned Feud' is a Freleng masterpiece: a hysterical, frantic, claustrophobic study of obsessive desperation and unnecessary cruelty that just pulsates with energy. Up there with Freleng classics such as 'Yankee Doodle Daffy' and 'Kit for Cat'.

I can't believe Sylvester's owners are cruel enough to go on holiday without him, never mind leaving him locked in the house for 2 weeks without any milk. Luckily our fave cat finds a massive stash of tinned tuna. But wait...no can opener. The mouse has stolen it.

But instead of being nice to Sly the mouse taunts him endlessly with an ever-just-out-of-reach can opener. Why? Why not be nice? The more he starves Sly the more likely he is to just eat the mouse. Sylvester's plans and attempts at getting the can opener echo many Tom and Jerry cartoons. But when he finally gets his hands on the prized object the mother of all twists is revealed.

Poor kitty.

Sylvester the Cat is left alone in his house all by his lonesome by his neglectful owners who lock him in with nothing to eat or drink. He finds a stash of canned tuna, but a deviant mouse has stolen the can opener and holds it just out of his reach, needlessly tormenting him. This is a somewhat amusing shot, but the mouse is just being a dick for the sake of being a dick which kind of tainted the overall feel of the short a tad. This animated short can be found on disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 1 and features an optional commentary by Jerry Beck.

My Grade: B

I've long wondered why the Termite Terrace crowd tortured Sylvester so much. In "Canned Feud", his owners go on vacation and leave him locked in the house. He has plenty of cans of tuna, but a nasty little mouse keeps holding the can opener out of reach, forcing Sylvester to come up with all sorts of unpleasant gags to try and get it.

So why would a mouse want to be a sadist? Your guess is as good as mine. Of course, these cartoons were chock-full of sadists (or at least characters with a New York side): Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, even Tweety himself. If nothing else, it goes to show that these cartoons weren't really intended for children; they were created to get shown before feature films in the cinema.

Anyway, it's not a bad cartoon, but I've seen better.

Every now and then, a cartoon comes along that you can't help but feel bad for the supposed-bad guy. Sylvester's owners have gone on vacation in California, and they (gasp!) forgot to put the cat out! Sylvester luckily finds a stash of canned tuna, but he still needs a can opener to get the food or he'll starve. As luck would have it, there is only one can opener in the house, and it's being held by a mouse who decides to torture poor Sylvester into fighting for it.

I couldn't help but watch this and wonder, what did Sylvester do to deserve this? Makes you wonder just what he's done to that mouse in the past to deserve such treatment. Or, there is the possible alternative that this mouse is just evil, pure and simple. Either way, Sylvester truly takes a beating through a falling piano, a vacuum cleaner, and a rather large mess of fireworks, as he desperately tries to keep from starving. A Friz Freling classic that everyone will love.