Title - The Hypo-Chondri-Cat
Director - Chuck Jones
Released - 1950
Reason for Placement --
Ok, where do I begin? This was, by far, one of the strangest toons ever to come from Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese. And I'm not talking abstract/so cool/never-before-seen strange; no, this is a whole new level of strange and bizarre.
Bertie & Hubie find themselves a new home, but find it's also the home of Claude Cat. However, Hubie notices that Claude is a hypochondriac, so the two mice proceed to mentally torture the poor feline into thinking he has a horrible disease, then that he requires an operation, and finally, that he has actually died and must ascend into Cat Heaven!
Time to be honest: this cartoon seriously freaked me out when I was a kid, mostly from the insanely creepy dream sequence Claude has after blacking out during the "operation". It was unlike anything I had ever seen. In the end, Bertie and Hubie manage to convince Claude to "move on", so to speak, by tying a balloon to his back and letting him fly upwards. And that's where the cartoon ends; I've always wanted to know what happened after that balloon finally popped and Claude realized he had been fooled.
Believe it or not, The Hypo-Chondri-Cat wasn't the first time Bertie and Hubie had tortured poor Claude (probably the first time I genuinely felt sorry for the so-called antagonist), and it wouldn't be the last, but this was a toon that really got into your mind and refused to let go. You may not laugh as much as you do in other toons, but it definitely leaves a mark.
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