Cheese Chasers
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| Cheese Chasers
Merrie Melodies series |
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|---|---|
 "This is a dream?!" Claude Cat with suicidal mice Hubie and Bertie in a scene from Cheese Chasers. |
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| Directed by | Charles M. Jones |
| Produced by | Eddie Selzer |
| Story by | Michael Maltese |
| Music by | Carl W. Stalling |
| Animation by | Ken Harris Ben Washam Lloyd Vaughan Phil Monroe |
| Studio | Warner Bros. Cartoons The Vitaphone Corporation |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | August 25, 1951 |
| Color process | Technicolor |
| Running time | 7 min (one reel) |
| IMDb profile | |
Cheese Chasers is a 1951 Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Chuck Jones, and starring Hubie and Bertie in their final appearances of the Classic era. Also starring are Claude Cat and a bulldog predecessor to Marc Antony. Mel Blanc plays Claude and Hubie, while Stan Freberg plays Bertie.
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[edit] Synopsis
At the end of a raid on a cheese factory, Hubie steps out of a wheel of cheese fat and nauseated. Bertie stumbles out after. Hubie determines that, based on the amount of cheese the average mouse eats in their lifetime (12 lbs.), they've eaten enough to have lived two thousand years. Determining that they can no longer stomach cheese, and with nothing else to live for, they determine their only course of action: suicide. They return home, where they write a generic suicide note ("Goodbye, cruel world!"), and introduce themselves to the gullet of a sleeping Claude Cat.
Claude immediately wakes up and spits the mice out. Believing that "something's rotten in Denmark", he figures the mice are poisoned, and refuses to eat them. After several attempts to refuse to eat them, and attempting to convince himself it's all a bad dream, he determines he can no longer eat mice, and also decides to commit suicide. Leaving an equally generic suicide note, Claude heads outside and punches the sleeping bulldog.
The bulldog sees Claude standing there with a blindfold and a cigarette, and asks what's going on. When Claude begs the dog to "massacre" him, the bulldog thinks "something's decidedly fishy here". It gets worse when Hubie and Bertie run out, trying to get Claude to eat them. The bulldog figures out that Claude no longer wants to eat mice, and the mice now hate cheese, but after using an adding machine to figure it out, concludes, "It just don't add up!" He runs after a dog catcher wanting to get committed, with Claude and the mice in hot pursuit, still bent on ending their own lives.
[edit] Quotes
- Hubie: "Bert, an average mouse eats 12 pounds of cheese in a lifetime. I figure tonight we've lived 2,000 years."
- Bertie: "Hubie, I'll never be able to touch the stuff again."
- Hubie: "Me neither. So there's nothing left to live for."
- Bertie: "You mean?!"
- Hubie: [nods solemnly] "Come on, Bert, let's get it over with."
- Bertie: "Yeah yeah. Over." *hic*
- Hubie: "Come on outta there! Are you gonna eat us or not?!"
- Claude: "No."
- Hubie: "All right you coward. Take this!"
- Hubie: "All we want is that you should eat us up, Mr. Cat."
- Bertie: "Yeah, eat us."
- Claude: "But I don't wanna eat you! Now, look. If I give you something nice, will ya go away?"
[edit] Censorship
- When this cartoon aired on The WB, the part where Hubie and Bertie hit Claude's foot with a hammer in an attempt to be eaten by him was cut.
[edit] Availability
- This cartoon can be seen (uncut and restored) on the second volume of The Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD set.
[edit] External links
- The cartoon can be seen on the Looney Tunes website here.
