15 February 2009

Tom and Jerry - "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse"


Full-length (7 minutes), not hi-def, but with excellent resolution.

Classic Hanna-Barbera animation from I think the late 1940s. The content of this episode is famous for being replete with what nowadays would be considered "politically incorrect" mayhem - the sort of stuff that certainly twisted the minds of us youngsters on Saturday mornings in the 1950s.
The shorts are famous for some of the most violent gags ever devised in theatrical animation: Jerry slicing Tom in half, shutting his head in a window or a door, Tom using everything from axes, pistols, explosives, traps and poison to try to murder Jerry, Jerry stuffing Tom's tail in a waffle iron (and also into what it seems as an old washing machine once), kicking him into a refrigerator, plugging his tail into an electric socket, pounding him with a mace, club or mallet, causing a tree or an electric pole to drive him into the ground, and so on. Despite all its popularity, Tom and Jerry has often been criticized as excessively violent.

2 comments:

  1. MCMXLVI in the opening credits denotes 1946

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yep, it is violent. Someone who has lived through such things being done to other people would not watch it for entertainment.

    This started the evolution to the eventual acceptance of Grand Theft Auto and then on to whatever comes next that makes GTA look PG.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...