Filmography: Terrytoons' Catnip Capers

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 7 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great cartoons to study.


Today, we digitized a batch of Terrytoons from the 3/4 inch masters donated to us by John Kricfalusi. Among them was a real gem... Catnip Capers (1940).



This cartoon is among the best cartoons TerryToons ever produced, and for my money, one of the best cartoons ever. It starts out like a typical Terry cat and mouse cartoon, but before long, it's gone off on a wild tangent into feline surrealism and exotica.




The backgrounds in this cartoons are spectacular. If anyone out there knows who laid out or painted these, please post to the comments below. There are times where backgrounds and layout are equal in importance to the animation of the characters... a couple of good examples would be the end of Tex Avery's "King Size Canary" and the St. James Infirmary Blues sequence of "Betty Boop in Snow White". This cartoon certainly fits in that category as well.




Terrytoons have been ufairly criticized as being "flaccid", "predictable" and "boring" in just about every animation history book that references them. The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive has made it a goal to collect and make available as much of the output of the studio as possible to put the lie to those mischaracterizations.



Catnip Capers (Terry/1940)
(Quicktime 7 / 13.5 megs)

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Thanks!
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

8.22.08
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