Shrunken Cinema/Termite Terrace/Scaredy Cat
From Eccentric Flower
Scaredy Cat
1947
Summary: Porky buys an Old Dark House; Sylvester finds it is infested with killer mice, but Porky doesn't believe him.
Director: Chuck Jones
Writer: Michael Maltese
Featuring: Porky Pig; Sylvester.
Onreel
0:17 Sound cue: The ominous-chords opening here is very similar to the openings to The Hare-Brained Hypnotist and Hyde and Hare.
1:29 Sound cue: "Rock-a-Bye Baby."
2:00 Sound cue: Chopin's funeral march.
2:33 Sound cue: Sylvester mimes bugling "Taps."
2:43 Porky is attempting to say "histrionics."
3:23 Sound cue: "Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart."
5:52 I'm going to count this as a "holding a sign up for the audience" score even if the sign is meant for Sylvester.
6:12 Sound cue during the presentation by Sylvester's conscience: Chopin's "Valse Brillante" (op. 34 #2). Piano performance.
6:29 Sound cue: "Yankee Doodle."
6:44 The sound cue as Sylvester is thrashing the mice inside the house is the rarely-used B theme of Raymond Scott's "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals."
7:12 "Pussycats is the cwaziest peoples": The mustache, facial expression, catch phrase, and intonation are all a joke on comedian Lew Lehr. The Napoleon hat is probably meant to show that the mouse is a little bit crazy (a symbol based on a long-running joke about people in asylums deluded that they actually Napoleon, which can sometimes be seen as shorthand in movies and such even today, although it's harder to pull off now that we have a couple of generations who have no idea who Napoleon was).
Offreel
This is the first of three cartoons - the other two are Claws for Alarm and Jumpin' Jupiter - in which Sylvester is aware of a danger that Porky isn't. In all three, Sylvester doesn't speak. This is the only one of the three where Porky eventually figures out that Sylvester is not just being hysterical.
The mice in this cartoon bear a definite resemblance to Jones' Hubie and Bertie characters, but that's probably just the way Jones draws mice.
Both scenes in this cartoon involving gunplay (Sylvester's suicide attempt and the gunshot that misses Porky) have been cut by squeamish broadcasters on various airings.
