Calypso Cat
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (March 2016) |
| Calypso Cat | |
|---|---|
 Title card | |
| Directed by | Gene Deitch |
| Produced by | William L. Snyder |
| Animation by | Václav Bedřich |
| Color process | Metrocolor |
Production company | Rembrandt Films |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Running time | 7:41 |
Calypso Cat is a Tom and Jerry animated short film, released on June 22, 1962. It was the seventh cartoon in the series to be directed by Gene Deitch and produced by William L. Snyder in Czechoslovakia.
Plot
While Tom was chasing Jerry around a dock, Jerry stops by a stack of passenger's luggage. He opens a bag on the top and a bowling ball rolls out of it. It rolls down the stack of luggage and hits Tom's head. Then Tom gets a bump on his head. He twists the bowling ball off his bump for it to hit Jerry. Jerry is sticking his tongue out at him. Tom runs after Jerry, then he steps onto a wooden plank making it rise. It hits Tom in the face and he falls below the ship into the sea. Now, the mouse looks underneath to see Tom sinking into the sea. Soon Tom gets up from behind and smashes him with a plate of jelly. Tom plays with the jelly using one of his fingers. But Jerry eats the jelly and then runs off. While chasing Jerry for another time, Tom sees a female cat and instantly falls in love with her. Meanwhile, Jerry places a box of matchsticks on his foot, takes a matchstick from it and scratches on the box to produce fire, and lights up fire on his foot. The female cat appears to return Tom's interest, so Tom sneaks aboard the ship the female cat and her owner have just boarded. However the captain throws him out of the ship. He ended up hitting and leaning on a pier. Jerry splashes a cup of water onto his face to wake him up. Next, Jerry follows Tom onto the ship and proceeds to interfere with Tom's subsequent flirtations.
Later, during the cruise, Tom gets a tray of pastries and feeds the female cat with it. Jerry, seeing Tom acting as if he is having a sweet date with her, kicks one of the two feet of the deckchair the female cat was sitting on. The female cat falls as the deckchair breaks down. Tom tries to prevent the tray of pastries from falling onto her but it did fall onto her. Seeing this, Jerry laughs. Tom lifts up the tray from the female cat's face and was shocked to see some of the pastries being knocked over onto her. He then gets a towel to soak it in water before using it to wipe the pastries knocked over off her. The cat trips over Jerry's foot and fall near the female cat. He ended up wiping off the pastries off her face but not the cream one of the pastries contain at first. So he wipes the cream off her face. Thinking that Tom was the one who made the deckchair she was sitting on fall, she smashes the tray onto Tom's head. The tray becomes bell shaped when it landed on Tom's head. Seeing a vase with flowers inside, Tom decides to impress the female cat by letting her smell the flowers. Jerry puts the flowers into the nozzle of a fire hose. Not noticing that the flowers were put into the nozzle by Jerry, Tom walks over to female cat grabbing the nozzle which contains the flowers and gets her attention. She smells the flowers when Jerry is turning on the fire hose to make it spray water and get Tom into trouble. By then, water spray onto her face as Tom was terrified to see the flowers being boosted by the water into the air. He finds out that the female cat was then boosted into the air as well. He stretches out his hands to catch the female cat. After she emerges from a vent, Tom neatens her bow tie. She smacked Tom on the chin angrily. When the ship arrives at its destination, a Caribbean island, Tom manages to make amends with the female cat after Jerry caused him to mess up on her. A local cat (Calypso cat) playing the steel drum spots the female cat and becomes smitten with her. Tom becomes jealous, especially when the female cat appears to return Calypso Cat's affections. Jerry tricks Calypso Cat into assaulting Tom by hitting the steel drum with a stone (Calypso cat thought Tom had kicked it). Obviously, Tom retaliates and the two start to fight each other, using the drums sticks and steel drum as weapons. Tom loses the fight, and Calypso Musician cat proceeds to walk off, accompanied by the female cat.
Jerry then sets Tom's feet on fire to get his attention, and Tom, now thinking of Jerry sabotaging his potential relationship, proceeds to chase Jerry again and onto the ship in a crazed fury. The ship arrives back at the dock where it had been at the start, and the chase continues on the dock. Despite being chased by Tom, Jerry is smiling in the camera for the episode's conclusion as if it was all worth it.
Production
In scoring the Tom and Jerry series, newcoming composer Stěpan Koniček "found a way forwards" through "avoiding old-style chase music" and "concentrating on atmospheric underscoring" in the Deitch shorts; his cues in this particular cartoon have been described as "dissonantly jazzy".[1]
Reception
While the Deitch shorts were generally negatively-received by Tom and Jerry fans, this particular short is often considered one of the best of the thirteen cartoons. This is due to its love triangle plotline that harkens back to the Hanna-Barbera era, as well as the background art and calypso-flavored soundtrack.
References
- ^ Cooke, Mervyn (2008). A History of Film Music. New York: Cambridge University Press.
External links