"D' Fightin' Ones" (1961, Merrie Melodies)
Director: Friz Freleng
This interesting Sylvester cartoon from 1961 marks one of the few times the Warner Brothers cartoons directly parodied a specific contemporary movie. While others, especially the Chuck Jones films, would take a genre or character and parody it, very few lampooned a movie right down to the title. In this case, Friz Freleng gave the 1958 feature "The Defiant Ones" the cartoon treatment. In the film, Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis play two escaped prisoners, a black man and a white man, on the run...the only problem is, they are shackled together, are both uncomfortable about each others' race, and must work together and learn to get along in order to free themselves and avoid getting caught by the law. Same goes for the cartoon, in which Sylvester and a big dog fall off the dogcatcher's truck chained together. With the typical sylvester cartoon slapstick and Friz Freleng comic timing, we get to enjoy the antics of the dog and Sylvester trying to get loose from the chain while avoiding being seen. In the end, they wrap the chai around a rail road track, but just as the train is about to cut it they realize that they are hanging from a bridge over a huge valley. They land in a junkyard, and although they are free at the hands, they realize that they now have a piece of scrap metal binding their legs together. They hop off into the distance.
