"Claws For Alarm" (1954, Merrie Melodies)
This is the second of three Porky Pig/Sylvester "horror" cartoons,
the first being "Scaredy Cat"(1948) and "Jumpin
Jupiter"(1955). All three were directed by Chuck Jones, who seemed to like
the idea of Sylvester as Porky's neurotic pet. Unlike other directors, Jones
casts Sylvester as a silent character who can only motion to get his point
across, and the naive Porky is on a completely different wavelength! In this
cartoon, Porky and Sylvester check into a roadside hotel, unaware that it's
really an abandoned hotel in a ghost town. Sylvester begins to see beady eyes 
staring
through cracks in the walls, and gets frightened by the shadow of a spider.
Porky dismisses him as a ridiculous coward and decides to ring for a night
clerk...but when he rings the bell, a noose slides out of a moosehead on the
wall, and Sylvester pushes Porky out of the way. He tries to explain, but Porky
doesn't believe him, and when the moosehead sprouts a gun and starts shooting,
Porky doesn't see it and blames Sylvester! Porky decides to just pick a room
himself, and of course picks an ominous one, #13! Again, a noose comes out of
the ceiling, and when Sylvester grabs a razor to cut it loose, Porky wakes up
and thinks Sylvester is trying to hurt him. Sylvester finally sees the
culprit, though, when a mouse swings from the rafters with a knife! Porky throws
Sylvester out of the room, and Sylvester sees a "ghost" (actually
about a dozen mice under a sheet!) When another gun comes out of the wall,
Sylvester shoots back, prompting Porky to ask "Is there any insanity in
your family?!" The frazzled cat hangs on to the gun and stands guard all
night, and when the sun comes up Porky decides to stay there for "A week or
ten days and get real rested up!" Sylvester clobbers Porky with the butt of
the gun just as he begins to sing "Home on the Range", and dumps him
in the car, knocked silly but still singing like a broken record! As Sylvester
drives away and sees the hotel vanishing in the distance, he breathes a sigh of
relief, until the beady eyes of the killer mice start to pop up in the
speedometer!
This cartoon was recently released on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3 DVD, and it's never looked better. "Claws For Alarm" has been routinely edited to death on TV, and a time-compressed version commonly shown on Cartoon Network made Porky's voice squeaky and the colors washed and dull, not to mention ruined the pace and timing of the film! The stills on this page are from the new restored DVD version.
