Satan’s Waitin’ (1954)
Article 5981 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-11-2021
Directed by Friz Freleng
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Tweety and Sylvester cartoon

Sylvester ends up dead after an unsuccessful attempt to capture Tweety and finds himself in hell which is run by a devil dog. Fortunately, he has eight more lives, but how long will that last, especially with the dog egging him on?

Truth to tell, I was pleasantly surprised by this one, largely because I had originally mistaken it for a different cartoon (whose name eludes me at the moment) in which a character’s descent to hell is the framing story for a bunch of footage from earlier cartoons, meaning I would end up having another opportunity to grouse about recycling footage, which I never enjoy. Still, this isn’t really one of the better Tweety and Sylvester cartoons, largely because it makes very poor use of Tweety, who is really little more than the prey of the cat here. Perhaps is no surprise that my favorite moment here is a Tweety one, in which he mistakes Sylvester’s frantic flapping of two feathers as a generous attempt to return them to the bird. To my mind, the funniest thing about this particular series is how Tweety generally proves more than a match for Sylvester.