Naughty But Mice (1947)
Article 5943 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-16-2021
Directed by Seymour Kneitel and Dave Tendlar
Featuring the voices of Jack Mercer, Carl Meyer, Sid Raymond
Country: USA
What it is: Herman the Mouse cartoon

Herman the Mouse comes from the city to visit his country friends only to discover they’re being terrorized by a champion mousing cat. Herman sets out to solve their problem.

I almost walked away from this cartoon without giving it a review when it suddenly struck me; the final gag involves several ghosts appearing. I might still have skipped it (after all, they only appear in the final gag), but actually decided I wanted to write a review anyway. I’ve seen several Herman the Mouse cartoons already and haven’t been impressed by them, but I actually thought this one was pretty good; the story makes good use of Herman’s cockiness by giving him a foe who somehow seems to survive all of Herman’s schemes. Sure, the post-Fleischer Paramount cartoons are a let-down, but they still hold up better than the work of some of the other cartoon studios of the era; this one comes up to the level of the lesser Looney Tunes. It’s always nice to cover a cartoon that works fairly well.