High Steaks

I am a fan of Tom and Jerry as I have already said in many of my reviews, but I know that within this great franchise there are many series that are complete garbage as well as "The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show" or also the one that for me is overrated "Tom and Jerry Kids" this last 2 series lost the charm of the originals (just like the Deitch era) but despite that they had good episodes and moments and the Deitch era too!, but this is not a good time of the age of deitch.

Here comes the Fat Man from Down And Ouiting who wants to prepare a Barbecue with his Cat (Tom) but Jerry ends up spoiling everything and Tom's Owner without knowing anything Reprimands Tom in Horribly Cruel Ways (Yes Blue Cat Blues was Cruel to Tom but this is more), the Violence is Disgusting, very exaggerated and too Explicit for a Tom and Jerry Cartoon, and I know that this series stands out for its Violence but exaggerating it too much shows that this type of Violence is not going with Tom and Jerry.

Here Jerry behaves like a Mean and Dirty man who only does everything to see his Adversary suffer, but he reaches the point where Tom is Beaten and Abused in Horrendous Ways because of him, and this is not the Jerry that we know and Love so much!, the Original Jerry was also cruel at times but in a not so exaggerated way and here the character has a disastrous personality that just wants to see Tom suffer.

The Animation is Horrendous and too Limited, the backgrounds are Empty like a Desert and with Boring colors that do not Draw Attention, the Character designs are poor and they deform too much to the point that they look completely horrible (although they do not deform as in Switchin Kitten), the Movements are Jerky, Tom's Torture Scenes are poorly animated and that makes the scenes look even more horrendous than they already are.

As I said before the Backgrounds are Limited and too ugly (even Down and Outing had better Backgrounds), the Colors are very faded and too Ugly making the scenarios look completely boring and very Basic.

The music sounds really horrible and is poorly orchestrated, it sounds too generic and is very out of place for a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Voice performances are Deficient, Allen Swift as always gives us the Privilege of only hearing Cries and Screams Badly Acted that makes the Cartoon petty and very Cruel to watch.

Like the voice acting, the Sound Effects are Repulsive and too Annoying, poorly synthesized and too out of character for a cartoon like this!

That's why for everything I said before I crown this as the Worst Tom and Jerry Short in general and one of the worst animated shorts that Gene Deitch produced ( if not the worst), the Music, Animation and Voice Acting results in a poor cartoon that is just a Torture Scenario for Tom, the fat owner does too many cruelties against Tom and that should not go in a Tom cartoon and Jerry!, Mammy Two Shoes also reprimanded Tom but she reprimanded him justly since the cat on those occasions did deserve the punishment!, Jerry was spoiled and was modified to a Mouse that only serves to harm Tom and that one does not He is the Jerry we know, for everything I said before, I rate this short with a 4!

The whole Gene Deitch series... some of the comments that have made about them, like they were made in a third world country...

In truth, they WERE farmed out. Metro closed its animation studio in 1957, whereupon Hanna Barbera took about a year to retool their team to produce their legendary fodder for American television, including Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.

By 1960, Metro belatedly realized that they had made a telling financial blunder (even though the last handful of shorts by H-B for Metro were, to a one, pitiful) and contracted with Deitch to produce exactly one "season" of Tom and Jerry cartoons at a fraction of the budget they had earlier enjoyed.

In a move that presaged all the later cartoon outsourcing to Korea, Deitch farmed all the work out to a low budget studio in Czechoslovakia. The Czech people were known for their production of innovative and iconoclastic cartoons - and let us be clear, Deitch was an artistic genius. You can tell from his work from the post-War period forward (largely collected in a coffee table book by Fantagraphics years later). But this stuff... this stuff... disastrous.

Other commenters here have gone over the malevolent violence of the "owner" character in this series, and the bargain basement schlocky music, and the ghastly, soulless drawings that truly took character animation back a full 30 years. However, there is one moment in "High Steaks" which has confused me for a long, long time.

In a sequence where Tom goes fleeing out of the yard (the grill might be burning on his tail or something), Jerry follows him as far as a street corner, then stops. Then a telephone is heard to ring.

This is the WTF moment of the whole cartoon. It has no context. I am more or less convinced that a phone rang during the recording session for the rinky-dink music, and it was just left in there. It's sort of like when Ringo Starr, drunk and stumbling, knocked over some gear during a recording session for the "Yellow Submarine" soundtrack, and the sound was left in for all eternity.

It's been said - and not without accuracy - that the Chuck Jones T&J's of 1964-66/7 were no great shakes, that they looked brilliant on screen but had none of the soul of the HB originals. Chuck Jones himself was on record agreeing with this assertion. Personally I do disagree but only for the few shorts in which Jones, Michael Maltese, and composer Eugene Poddany collaborated - the results are classic Jones and wonderful to behold. But even the lamest entries in the series Jones produced show cohesiveness, attention to quality and detail, and the ability to build a story out of a series of chase gags.

With little if any exception, the Deitch T&Js show none of these qualities. The only thing WORSE than these, are the T&Js that H-B themselves produced for TV years later in which - for the sake of Standards & Practices - Tom and Jerry are toothless, dimensionless friends in which Jerry sports a disastrous red bow-tie for no reason. Years later, this was lampooned in "The Simpsons" in the episode where Itchy and Scratchy succumb to PC pressure and "share, and share, and share and share and share."

I will give some credit, High Steaks is not the worst of the Gene Dietch Tom and Jerry cartoon. It is not as sadistic as Switchin' Kitten or Sorry Safari or as creepy as Dicky Moe and Landing Stripling. However, that is saying very little, even for Tom and Jerry High Steaks is very painful to watch and epitomises everything that makes the Gene Dietch cartoons so horrible to watch.

The animation is incredibly shoddy for starters. The facial expressions are forced, the colours are flat, the backgrounds are static and the editing is all-over-the place. The music is abysmal as well, there are no memorable, beautiful or energetic motifs, instead it is annoying, repetitive and creepy.

The cartoon is further disadvantaged by some truly stomach-churning sound effects, dull pacing, a predictable story and some sickening violence, so much so I felt compelled to turn the television off. When it comes to the characters, I really sympathised with Tom, Jerry is underused and really annoying and when it comes to talking about the support characters on Tom and Jerry the owner gets my vote as my most hated, I absolutely despised him with all my heart, it actually went beyond supposing to hate him.

Overall, while not the worst, this is a painful cartoon and to be avoided. 2/10 Bethany Cox

Tom and Jerry are always violent...everyone knows that. However, this kind of violence I found disturbing. I am fine with 2 anthropomorphized animals hitting each other with mallets and anvils...but to watch a human strangle Tom after he was being tortured by Jerry? no. That's too much. The Gene Deitch (spelling) shorts are all terrible. They have humans being cruel to Tom non stop...usually after Jerry does something terrible to him to start. The old H B shorts had them switch who was the aggressor and they both got licks in. The Deitch ones are 100% one sided in that Jerry is always the aggressor and Tom never gets his own licks in because that "owner" of his would always grab him the second he catches up to Jerry and starts to mercilessly beat him. The worst part was when Tom pleads for his owner not to hurt him and he, without a seconds thought, beats him. It's really awkward to watch...to bad my son can't get enough of Tom and Jerry and I have to be in the same room as this and the other Deitch shorts on a daily basis.

Gene deitch who made these shorts thought these were better than Hanna and Joe's shorts. Sorry this short has bad music as well as bad jokes. At least the owner is not as bad as he is in sorry safari. Still this is a bad cartoon.