It's Got Me Again!

Last updated

It's Got Me Again! (1932)
Directed by Rudolf Ising
Produced by Hugh Harman
Rudolf Ising
Leon Schlesinger
Starring Johnny Murray
The Rhythmettes (uncredited) [1]
Music by Frank Marsales
Animation by Isadore Freleng
Thomas McKimson
Color process Black and White
Production
company
Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures
The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date
  • May 14, 1932 (1932-05-14)
Running time
7 min (one reel)
LanguageEnglish

It's Got Me Again! is a 1932 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated short film directed by Rudolf Ising. [2] The short was released on May 14, 1932. [3]

Contents

It is noted as the first cartoon from Warner Bros. to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1932. [4] The title refers to the song "It's Got Me Again!" (music by Bernice Petkere, lyrics by Irving Caesar) which plays during the cartoon.

Plot

One night, a Mickey Mouse-like mouse crawls out of a mouse hole and attempts to sneak out only to be scared back by a grandfather clock's chimes and gets its tail stuck in a mousetrap. After escaping the trap via entering its hole, the mouse exits the hole, grabs and eats the cheese on the mousetrap and continues trekking onwards. After going through multiple musical instruments, the mouse bounces on a drum and activates a gramophone, which plays the titular song. This causes the mouse to tell his mouse friends to come out and dance to the tune, which they promptly do. Some mice even run on the disc being played only to be launched off. One of the mice launched bounces off of a horn and slides through a flute, creating multiple smaller versions of itself, which starts to play Yankee Doodle alongside its fellow mice. During this, a few mice march across the ceiling (with animation reused from Hold Anything), with one off-sync and even falling off of the ceiling and into a spittoon after the song ends. The mice mock the off-sync mouse who retaliates by blowing a raspberry through a trombone, creating a loud noise and stopping the mocking mice. The mouse then waltzes off whistling Yankee Doodle, all the while a hungry cat watches on.

The mouse waltzes to a piano where two mice are shown doing a variation of the Apache dance on it. During this, the hungry cat climbs to the rooftop and watches from above before diving through the chimney. After landing in the fireplace, the cat notices a cuckoo clock before diving towards it and eating it, which causes the cat to hiccup cuckoo noises. As it sneaks up on the mice, the cuckoo noises alert the mice to the cat's presence, causing all but one mouse to escape. This mouse is chased all around the house until he's cornered. This results in him begging the cat to let him go through singing a variation of the title song. However, seeing as the cat won't let him go, the mouse's friends launch a drum stick at the cat using a guitar's bow as a bow and arrow.

This causes the cat to flee as the rest of the mice attack the cat with other instruments-turned-weapons, such as a harp launching more drum sticks, mice using a flamethrower to burn the cat and cause him to be knocked out by a drum, a mouse tickling the cat with a noisemaker, and ending the cat off by firing needles from the gramophone as if a machine gun, resulting in the cat fleeing through the window as the mice cheer.

Title song

Throughout the cartoon, the song "It's Got Me Again!" by Bernice Petkere plays. While the original song is played at the start, most of lyrics don't seem to be intelligible outside of the name of the song and certain other words and no other records of the song before or after the cartoon exist. The song is, however, among the songs played in Vince Giordano: There's a Future in the Past, although no lyrics are sung.

Home media

It's Got Me Again! is available as a bonus feature on disc 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3.

Related Research Articles

<i>Merrie Melodies</i> Cartoon series owned by Warner Bros. (1931–1969 and 1988–1997)

Merrie Melodies is an American animated comedy short film series distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It is the companion series to Looney Tunes, and featured many of the same characters as the former series. It originally ran from August 2, 1931, to September 20, 1969, during the golden age of American animation, though it had been revived in 1979, with new shorts sporadically released until June 13, 1997. Originally, Merrie Melodies placed emphasis on one-shot color films in comparison to the black and white Looney Tunes films. After Bugs Bunny became the breakout character of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes transitioned to color production in the early 1940s, the two series gradually lost their distinctions and shorts were assigned to each series randomly.

Sniffles (<i>Merrie Melodies</i>) Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon character

Sniffles is an animated cartoon and comic-book mouse character in the Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes series of cartoons and comics.

Piggy (<i>Merrie Melodies</i>) Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon character

Piggy is the name of two animated cartoon characters in the Merrie Melodies series of films distributed by Warner Bros. The first character was a fat, black pig wearing a pair of shorts with two large buttons in the front, and his first film was You Don't Know What You're Doin'!

Beans (<i>Looney Tunes</i>) Warner Bros. theatrical cartoon character

Beans the Cat is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Cartoons series of cartoons from 1935–1936. Beans was the third Warner Bros cartoon character star after Bosko and Buddy. He is voiced by Billy Bletcher and occasionally by Tommy Bond. He was created by director Friz Freleng. The character was featured in nine cartoons made in 1935 and 1936.

The Mouse-Merized Cat is a 1946 Warner Bros. cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series, directed by Robert McKimson. It is a sequel to 1945's Tale of Two Mice, with the Abbott and Costello characterizations cast as mice. A 1942 cartoon, A Tale of Two Kitties, cast Abbott and Costello as cats and introduced Tweety Bird. They are voiced by Tedd Pierce and Mel Blanc respectively. This cartoon marks the final appearances for Babbit and Catstello during the Golden age of American animation.

Babbit and Catstello are fictional characters, based on the comedic duo Abbott and Costello, that appeared in Warner Bros. animated cartoons. The characters appeared in three cartoons between 1942 and 1946.

<i>Cheese Chasers</i> 1951 film by Chuck Jones

Cheese Chasers is a 1951 Warner Bros. Cartoons Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese. The cartoon was released on August 25, 1951 and stars Hubie and Bertie, with Claude Cat.

Tabasco Road is a 1957 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Bob McKimson. The short was released on July 20, 1957, and stars Speedy Gonzales.

<i>Have You Got Any Castles</i> 1938 film by Frank Tashlin

Have You Got Any Castles is a 1938 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Frank Tashlin. The short was released on June 25, 1938. Characters from well-known works of literary fiction come to life inside of a library after hours.

<i>Hold Anything</i> 1930 film

Hold Anything is the third short in the Looney Tunes series from Warner Bros., released to theaters in October 1930. Featuring Bosko, it is loosely based on the lost film Hold Everything, one of whose songs, "Don't Hold Everything," features prominently in the cartoon. It was directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, and animated by Isadore "Friz" Freleng and Norman Blackburn.

Mice Follies is a 1960 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Robert McKimson. The short was released on August 20, 1960. It was the third and last of McKimson's parodies of Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners, following The Honey-Mousers (1956) and Cheese It, the Cat! (1957).

<i>Aint We Got Fun</i> (film) 1937 film

Ain't We Got Fun is a 1937 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Tex Avery. The cartoon was released on May 1, 1937. The title is based on the popular song of the same name.

<i>Claws for Alarm</i> 1954 film

Claws for Alarm is a 1954 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Chuck Jones. The short was released on May 22, 1954 and stars Porky Pig and Sylvester.

<i>The Mouse That Jack Built</i> 1959 American film

The Mouse That Jack Built is a 1959 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodie cartoon short starring Jack Benny and the regular cast of The Jack Benny Program as mice. The short, released on April 4, 1959, was written by Tedd Pierce and directed by Robert McKimson.

<i>Pizzicato Pussycat</i> 1955 film

Pizzicato Pussycat is a 1955 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated short directed by Friz Freleng. The short was released on January 1, 1955.

The Cat Came Back is a 1936 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng. The short was released on February 8, 1936.

<i>The Fifth-Column Mouse</i> 1943 film by Friz Freleng

The Fifth-Column Mouse is a 1943 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Friz Freleng. The short was released on March 6, 1943.

Trap Happy Porky is a 1945 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes short directed by Chuck Jones and written by Tedd Pierce. The short was released on February 24, 1945, and features Porky Pig, along with Hubie and Bertie, an early version of Claude Cat and a prototype of Hector the Bulldog.

Mouse-Warming is a 1952 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes short, directed by Chuck Jones. The cartoon was released on September 6, 1952 and stars Claude Cat in his final solo cartoon.

<i>The Lyin Mouse</i> 1937 film

The Lyin' Mouse is a 1937 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng. The short was released on October 16, 1937.

References

  1. ↑ Scott, Keith (2022). Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, 1930-70. BearManor Media. p. 8. ISBN   979-8-88771-010-5.
  2. ↑ Beck, Jerry; Friedwald, Will (1989). Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A Complete Illustrated Guide to the Warner Bros. Cartoons. Henry Holt and Co. p. 11. ISBN   0-8050-0894-2.
  3. ↑ Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. pp. 104–106. ISBN   0-8160-3831-7 . Retrieved June 6, 2020.
  4. ↑ "The 5th Academy Awards (1932) Nominees and Winners". Oscars.org (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). Archived from the original on May 7, 2016. Retrieved June 24, 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.