TheLittleSongbird While not the best of the Looney Tunes canon, it is still enjoyable with a lot to recommend it. The villainous mice could have been developed more, but other than that I had little problem with Scaredy Cat. Porky and Sylvester are both great, especially Sylvester who gets the worst of the scares, particularly the infamous sequence down in the basement, that and the scene after did scare me as a kid. As well as being freaky, there are some funny moments too, slapsticky yes but they were well timed and funny. The animation is excellent, Sylvester is somewhat different-looking, but Porky is drawn very well and the backgrounds and colouring are audacious. The music is both rousing and atmospheric, the dialogue is great, the gags are fine, the story is well-constructed and quite original and Mel Blanc is once again brilliant as both Sylvester and Porky. Overall, not the best but very well done. 9/10 Bethany Cox

phantom_tollbooth Chuck Jones's 'Scaredy Cat' is the best of the few pairings of Porky Pig and Sylvester. Casting Porky as Sylvester's owner (Sylvester is more cat-like than usual, remaining silent for the whole cartoon), 'Scaredy Cat' finds the pair moving into a spooky mansion which terrifies Sylvester from the outset. Rather than ghosts, however, the mansion is populated by murderous mice who ritually execute their victims. Somehow this makes 'Scaredy Cat' all the more frightening. And it is frightening! There are several morbid sequences including a scene of a cat being carted off to his death by a mousey executioner and a moment in which Sylvester attempts suicide rather than being sent out to face the vicious vermin alone. Most terrifying of all though, is an infamous sequence in which the mice take Sylvester to the basement. We never see what they do to him but he emerges nearly three hours later, a pale white zombie scared rigid by what he has experienced. It's a classic example of the human mind conjuring up far worse scenarios when the details are left to the imagination. All in all, 'Scaredy Cat' is an indelibly creepy and extremely well staged cartoon which relies on horror as much as laughs to achieve its impact.

estafarol The scene where Sylvester is lying unconscious on his bed in the kitchen, and was lowered through a trap door from 1:10 am to 4:00 am is probably the most frightening scene I never watched on a cartoon. They never show what happened to Sylvester, but when he returns, he's changed physically and looks completely traumatized (his fur is white and looks aged, he's not shivering anymore, and his eyes are dilated and with a lost look). Not showing what's in the basement urges you to try to figure it, and you'll probably end realizing the horrors Sylvester witnessed are beyond your imagination. That kind of involvement of the audience is, in my humble opinion, the most elegant form of horror to me!

Lee Eisenberg In the first Sylvester/Porky pairing, they move into an abandoned house, which Sylvester discovers is inhabited by killer mice. Every time that he saves Porky from getting murdered, the clueless Porky thinks that Sylvester is the crazy one. Sylvester just never seems to have any luck! One thing that I wondered was whether or not the apparently evil rodents are supposed to be Hubie and Bertie (or their relatives); they looked pretty similar. If you've seen enough Looney Tunes cartoons, you may recall that Hubie and Bertie are those mice who play all sorts of nasty tricks on Claude the Cat to get him out of the house.Oh well. Whether they are or not, "Scaredy Cat" is still a great cartoon. "Claws for Alarm" had almost exactly the same plot.