The Disturbing Ending and Legacy

You are now listening to the Someone's favorite Productions podcast network Hello and welcome to Tumbleweeds and TV Cowboys. My name is Hunter In this podcast, I'll be joined by a different guest each week to discuss a classic Western movie or TV show I've been a fan of classic Westerns for as long as I can remember, and in recent years they've become very nostalgic for me. I love the aesthetic, the tropes, and I love seeing different filmmakers' takes on them. At their best, they're incredibly entertaining, rewatchable, and some of my all time favorite movies are Westerns We'll mostly focus on Western movies made in Hollywood, but we'll also be covering spaghetti westerns. and one thing I'm very excited to get into are Western TV shows. I've got some amazing guests coming on the show, film professors, historians, and podcasters. And Tumblewedes and TV Cowboys is part of the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network, and many guests on the show will be from other shows on the network Thanks for listening I'm a writer and film historian and I'm very excited to talk about Cat City or Mashkafogo in the original Hungarian, which translates more literally to cat catcher And this is a nineteen eighty six animated film that touches on a number of genres I'm going to talk about more as we go along It was hugely, hugely popular at the time And while I think it does have a lot of the classic characteristics of Hungarian animation, But there are some things about this film that are a little unusual, namely how heavily it references American cinema, and certainly some Western European cinema as well This was directed by Bella Ternovsky and written by Josef Npp who are both really staples of Hungarian cinema and especially animated cinema, animated series And I'm going to talk a lot more about their careers as we go on. but I think it's important to note that this Star Wars style opening tells us a lot that we need to know about this film. Namely that it's gonna reference Star Wars and science fiction, also fantasy Definitely that it's deeply influenced by more mainstream American cinema, American animation, and certainly Hollywood and I love this sort of reference to the date that we have here, the year eighty AM or No Mickey Mouse Of course, this is a film about mice. Mickey Mouse was actually created in nineteen twenty eight. so it's not quite eighty years later But this is the antithesis of Mickey Mouse and traditional Disney children's animated cinema in so many ways And so many delightful ways And I think if this film had been made with and was a live action film instead of being animated, you could see how obviously it borrows from a lot of crime tropes are associated with things like pulp fiction and comic books and certainly films that we would consider to be Cinema and not children's cinema. And something that's really important to keep in mind throughout this film is that animation was really, really popular in Hungary and there are a number of greatreat examples that kind of parallel Cat City and certainly that lead up to it and influenced it that I'm going to talk about a little bit later. But it's really important to keep in mind that animated films generally speaking were meant for an audience of both adults and children. And so you see a lot of these Hungarian films that are either quite explicitly for adults or that touch on what we might think of as more adult themes. Like there's some really explicit violence in this film and also some sexual content, which is, you know, always kind of a surprise the first time you see it. I think at its heart, this is basically a film about evil cats who are trying to commit genocide against Mice Which is just really a wild premise that you don't see in a lot of American kids animation films And I think what's so great about this is the way that it combines so many different genres. Certainly we have elements more closely associated with kids cinema And there, I think are some pretty explicit references to films like Fival and things like that that I'll talk about later But there's also a lot here coming from more adult genres that I do want to get into. and I don't speak Hungarian, but my understanding is there's so much humor that just doesn't translate if you're watching this either with an English dub or with English subtitles, but there's a lot of really funny punning going along with their names, which I want to talk more about because it's It's just absolutely wonderful. And Something that I should say about this film is it was created by Penonia Film Studio who were a really large, I believe the largest popular, important animation studio in Hungary And a lot of the artists who worked with them went on to do productions with other countries, a lot of them emigrated And so something that I think is always a surprise to people Because Hungarian cinema, if you don't have an interest in it, if you're not Hungarian I think it can feel kind of inaccessible to a lot of Americans and English language audiences. But with Hungarian animation specifically, there is a surprising amount of crossover with American cinema, British cinema, Western European cinema. And I think you see that kind of international quality come across really, really strongly in Cat City. especially in the way that it borrows from what looks like everything from inspector gadget to Star Wars and especially to James Bond Even Godzilla to a degree It really pulls its influences from so many different places. so The basic plot is we have these cats who I want to talk more about this a little bit later, but I think you could read these evil cats as being a commentary on Soviet totalitarianism in a way. Certainly they are not communists by any stretch of anyone's imagination But they do have this totalitarian quality and they are It basasically this greedy crime syndicate who has a lot of wealth and resources. They have agents everywhere And they're spending tons and tons of money on these often hilarious experiments because they want to wipe out mice, but they also want to steal from the mice. And so they seem to be driven prrimarily by greed And some of these experiments like shrinking cats down so that they can fit into mice holes and steal the mice the mouse' food and their property. You know, you see that reflected in the beginning when There's that bank robbery where the cat just sort of demolishes an entire wall There's so much here that is really reminiscent of spy thrillers, especially spy spoofs And so much that I think would be recognizable whether you are a Hungarian child watching this film in the late eighties or whether you're watching it now and have no real reference for Hungarian cinema. And I think that's one of the things that made it So, so incredibly popular So I do just want to talk about panonia for a second So they're based in Budapash, formed in nineteen fifty one. They became independent in nineteen fifty seven It really, I think just made such a wide range of animated films at a time when there weren't a lot of other studios doing that. Maybe independent artists but not entire studios. Everything from short films TV series, feature films And their work covers everything from shorts that feel more like edgier commercials. to standard kids TV series to high fantasy to more kind of conventional adult drama, the sort of thing that you would see in a live action TV show It's also important to note that a lot of the series and films they made, especially in the sixties and seventies and into the eighties were based on Hungarian myths and legends and folk tales And so Cat City, I think, even though it was so popular does take kind of a turn away from that because of how indebted it is to more popular culture and especially American culture. And It was so popular at the time that it was put up for the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, which it didn't win, but I think that's something that I wanted to point out just because for this animated film about you know, evil cats trying to wipe out these adorable sweet mice and this secret agent kind of coming up against them, I think it's so unusual to see something like this even be considered for best foreign language film It's just kind of delightful And I also wanted to point out, you know, I think we're in kind of a golden age right now of Hungarian cinema from many, many different decades being restored and released for many audiences to see for the first time restored, new subtitles. And certainly if you were watching something like Cat City, In an English language friendly release later in the eighties or in the nineties, you probably were gonna see a dubbed version gives all the characters wildly different names and loses some of the spicy, more adult quality and also loses some of the puns. So it's really great to be able to see this looking so gorgeous in Hungarian as it was intended with more accurate subtitles. and I definitely will talk about those puns as we go along because some of them are very, very funny. So it's just nice to see Bom working for organizations like the Hungarian National Film Institute pututting so much work into preserving their rich Wonderful and T little scene cinema history whichich includes so much great animation and Hungarian animation really goes all the way back to The nineteen tenens and people like Isvan Kato Kushli who started off making things like paper cutouts And a lot of the artists in early Hungarian animation, I think did have an influence on later generations of artists and animators A lot of them started off as more experimental artists and graphic designers and painters And so I think with Hungarian cinema, part of why it's so influential is you see it pulling from a lot of different artistic backgrounds. and As I suggested a little bit earlier when I was talking about Panonia, a lot of those early artists, even in the nineteen tw s We're making a wide range of animated material, everything from ads to more entertainment based shorts to things like educational shorts And from the very beginning, I think there was a strong influence in genre material, whether it was literary adaptations of science fiction or fantasy or whether it was coming from folktales and things like classic late medieval epic poetry, which was surprisingly common And that's something that we don't really see as much with American or English language animation that is really all over the place in the history of Hungarian animation I think it's why it tends to be a little bit more flexible than the animation from other countries. You get the sense that Hungarian audiences were kind of up for anything and they didn't just expect animated stories or shorts or feature films. to be for children, but they could really be anything, and indeed they were And I think a lot of those early Hungarian animators influential in a much more international way because of everything going on in that inner war period. Starting with World War one in the nineteen ten s, going up to World War two in the late thirties and early forties, you have this problem in Central Europe in general but definitely also in Hungary where From the end of the Austro Hungarian Empire up to the different occupations and the real chaos and tragedy the country experienced in World War II, you have its artists going many different places, going to the United Kingdom, to France, some of them went to the U S And I think because they're forced to spread out, a lot of those early artists and animators are taking some of their skills with them I think a great example of this and one that will be the most familiar to American audiences is someone like George Powell whose original name is Yorgi Pal Martinchk And he' a Hungarian artist who basically left Hungary and started working as an artist, an animator, and even started his own animation studios in places like Berlin and Prague and Paris And because of World War two He was forced to emigrate to the U S in nineteen thirty nine. which is where he started making some of the films that I think are maybe a little bit underseen compared to someone like Walt Disney, but are beloved. I mean, he even made Really beloved live action films like something like The Time Machine in nineteen sixty which I think were influenced by those early decades of Hungarian animation and you have this sort of whole generation of animators who either stay in Hungary and manage to survive or return after the war. and do some really, really incredible work, whether it's in advertising or experimental arthouse cinema or more conventional children's story about animals. You know, you have people like Yulia Makshasi and Felix Kasowvitz who influenced what was going on in films made in the seventies and eighties, much like Cat City I mean, you can find early examples from the fifties about animals who are basically allegories for Humanity and human life, things like the mouse and the lion from nineteen fifty seven whichich is all about this mouse who is kind of a good sort of moral inspirational figure And a lot of those fifties, sixties and seventies animated stories often had some kind of moral component You could argue the same thing about Disney stories, but I think it's much more direct in some of the Hungarian animation where they're clearly meant to be educational with entertainment as kind of a secondary function, whereas I would say something like Disney animation is totally the other way around And it's just fascinating to me that throughout the many decades of Hungarian animation No matter how popular some of these films became They really kept to that blend of traditional children's cinema, experimental art house cinema, and advertising And I do just want to point out this relationship here where The only nice cat in this entire movie is this young kitten who just has the worst time because she's best friends with this mouse. She brings him food, she's really nice to him. they get along. which I think implies that and mice can get along in this universe. And there's certainly a suggestion in the beginning that, you know, Kathy isn't alone. that there were these laws and these accords that allowed cats and mice to live together But for whatever reason That has been subverted and overturned by this crime syndicate of greedy evil mice And I think it is fairly common in a lot of animated stories and certainly also a lot of genre films whether it's fantasy or science fiction to have this kind of polarity where the quote unquote evil characters are just absolute evil and they lack that sort of nuance that you see in more straightforward realistic dramas And I should say that even though Pannonia stududios really wound down in the late eighties, I think something like Cat City is a really great place to start if you're trying to get into Hungarian animation becausecause in a way it represents all of the best of Hungarian animation, especially meant for a family audience that appeals to both adults and children because you have all of these decades of really talented artists working to perfect the form. And certainly, as I said, there is an international component. You know, Panonia did a lot of co productions with other countries They worked on series like Arthur, which is Australian based. They worked with some French and German artists And by the sixties, I think really started to push what they could do as artists and what audiences were interested in. and moved away from just doing ads and more of those educational series. to doing things like Tbor Shernockxs, the Red Pka dot Ball from nineteen sixty one, which is really just experimental art house cinema. and it serves no. function that is educational or that is really mainstream children's entertainment in any way. And so I think because a lot of these artists, especially the ones working in the mid eighties on things like Cat City, because they grew up in this really encouraging permissive environment at least the animation was concerned. I think you see so much more creativity because of that freedom. And some good examples of some of the series that they made in the late sixties and into the seventies that I think are precursors to Cat City are things Like this series called Gustav, which I want to talk a little bit more about later because a number of the people who made Cat City also worked on Gustav And Gustav are these kind of educational animated short films meant really more for adults than for children About this guy named Gustav and they're episodic. So it's not like you have to watch them in a certain order Gustav's character kind of changes from episode to episode, but they're often about daily life in Hungary and navigating being an adult and things like that There's also this series called the Mjga familyamily. that is more of a traditional family drama show. There's another one about this family and everything they go through with their pet dog There are definitely a lot of series in the seventies that feature animal protagonists. like there's one all about this a magical rabbit that pulls from tons of Hungarian folk tales And so, so many of them in the seventies and into the early eighties are based on Hungarian folk talales and would often get pretty specific and regional. and that's something that I think you just don't see in American cinema because we don't have a long history of centuries of living here And so it's I think pretty typical to see not just fantasy and folk talales show up in a lot of these animated stories but also more direct history and as I said earlier, epic poems. I mean Some of the really, really classic Hungarian animated films are things like Heroic Times, Johnny Corncob, Son of the White Mare which I think people would be able to recognize a lot of the references without knowing anything about Hungarian history or literature or folklore because they feel like more traditional Medieval tales like in Son of the white mare, he has these you powers and has to grapple with that responsibility. And so in a lot of ways, something like heroic times feels a little bit like Arthurian mythology in England And so some of that history, I think, finds its way into the lesser seen sub genenres like the science fiction and more American style fantasy that you see in Cat City. And again, I think it's because some of those animators, even the ones who stayed in Hungary and were working with Pannonia to work in the U. S and helped create shows like The Simpsons and Rugrats and So so many of these later animated tales do have those kind of recognizable animal protagonists also all over American animated cartoons. You have Maddie the Goose Boy from nineteen seventy seven, The Little Fx nineteen seventy eight And I think really the only reason that Panonia's popularity ended is because of what was going on in Hungarian society in the eighties, where the Cold War is really winding down and as is the Soviet Union And so a lot of things, I think, feel very in fllux in Hungary at the time And the transition, which really goes throughout the decade leaves a lot of people feeling really uncertain. And this is why, you know, I think so much of Cat City with these evil cats who just want to take and take and take and crush this mouse population. I think is a commentary on Soviet and Soviet satellite states grappling with that totalitarian system. And I think it's also important to say that often during these kinds of really restrictive governments, Nazi Germany is another great example Artists and a lot of filmmakers would use historical themes and genre themes, especially fantasy. as a way to get around some really repressive censorship laws and make comments on contemporary life and things that people were going through And you see so often in the Soviet Union, In a lot of the Soviet satellite states, certainly Hungary and Poland that history and fantasy because they aren't realist They're really not encouraged in the beginning So Stalin really pushed for this idea of socialist realism. So in the fifties, you see all of these films that are expected to express the values of Soviet communism By the sixties, things start to lighten up a little bit, especially if a filmmaker is turning to things like history and folklore and fantasy. It's why you see dozens and dozens of Russian fairy tale films And I think it's also why Hungarian animators were really able to get away with quite a lot because even though they weren't socialist realism, They were seen as being separate from contemporary life And I think these films also get away with a lot because there is that murky line between adult animation and adult fantasy stories and children's fantasy And certainly a lot of mythology and folklore, whether we're talking about Hungarian folklore or something like Greek mythology A lot of it is just clearly not meant for children and has extremely violent and dark subject matter ranging from all kinds of gory and graphic murders to things like sexual assault And Cat City, I think starts to cross that line You know, we see the cats doing some pretty horrible things in the first half an hour of this film And it really only gets worse from there. you know, on the plane ride that's coming up We see a whole bunch of people killed, including Graphic shooting to the head And it really only gets more extreme from there And so I think what makes this so interesting is the way that it plays with that line as much as possible Of course these cats who are literally trying to commit genocide work with anyone who they think is as nasty as possible like Vunch Fartz. who is basically an assassin gangster And the great team of rats that they wind up hiring who even have a song about how vicious and terrible they are. It's just delightful But I think it does help to understand a little bit of what was going on in Hungary at this period. You know, the People's Republic of Hungary certainly is not the Soviet Union, but does have a lot of parallels because they were a satellite state. And even though they attempted to have their own revolution, it was squashed and they were kind of dragged back in. And that happened in nineteen fifty six. So by the eighties The People's Republic of Hungary, I think It wasn't as restrictive as some other places, but because of the Hungarian economy, they're really struggling at this point where there's just huge amounts of inflation, which was pretty common in a lot of the Soviet territories in the eighties And They really, I think, had a huge problem with poverty because of that. And so you have strikes going off everywhere and People really started to not trust the government. Jan Katar was the general seecretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party and was really seemingly trying to do his best with navigating what was right for Hungary and what they were expected to do to maintain a good relationship with the Soviet Union And all of that really crumbles during this particular period. But of course I have to interrupt myself to point out this incredible song that the rats sing about J justust how evil and violent they are. you know, they're stuffing mice through meat grinders. they have this great line in their song where they're talking about how they'll even taxidermy your victims for you if that's what you want It's such a great and kind of unexpected interlude. Like there aren't too many songs throughout this film But they really all go pretty over the top. I do want to talk about the songs a little bit later and how they tie into the importance of the film's writing. But by this point in Hungarian history, You know, it really seems clear that communism is collapsing and you see that show up In some of these films in sneakier ways, certainly especially before the fall of the Soviet Union in the early nineties. But I think it's something that you see start to emerge even in the sixties and seventies with some of the nation's more experimental filmmakers Especially people like Mklos Ykh So sort of proved that if he made films with very unclear plots And lots of really striking visuals and pulled from things like folklore and history He could make a lot of comments about the repressive social environment of the period And I think that has this kind of trickle down effect where it does show up in some of these animated stories as well and That importance of allegory, which you do see in a lot of Soviet and Soviet satellite state films, is nowhere more important than Hungary And that's of course why I think it makes so much sense to have so many of these animal protagonists Whether you're watching a short film or a series or a feature film that is meant for adults or children or some combination of the two Allegory was so, so, so common in this period And of course, it's really important to keep in mind that these films were made during communism. And what's so fascinating about Cat City in particular is if you think about it as a James Bond spoof. Part spoof Part celebration But A lot of the Bond films and a lot of the American and Western European spy spoof movies are Cold War movies where the villains are either communists or Soviets. or in some way related And it's just so funny to see a spy spoof and a Bond spoof made by a communist country And that sort of reflexive nature of Cat City is part of what makes it so interesting And the way that it also folds in things like American gangster films, certainly, as I mentioned with the Rats There's so many layered references here that it really It sort of feels like a love letter to eighties pop culture in a way that is just so delightful And certainly the cats here As I mentioned at the beginning, aren't obviously Soviet officials. becausecause they are so greedy and so power hungry and so intolerant of any other way of life Heel bent on genocide I think it's very difficult not to see it as a parody of Soviet society in a lot of ways And it's, I think relatively rare to find a film that feels like both a celebration and a parody of American culture and mainstream more international popular culture But that is also effectively a commentary on late stage Soviet totalitarianism And I think part of why they got away with that is because it really is just a grab bag of every single genre You know, you have science fiction, you have fantasy, you have the Star Wars references, you have musical numbers. We have vampires later on. We have a hint of the spaghetti Western Which I will definitely talk about more when we get there because it's so fascinating So many of these sequences I think could be lifted straight out of not only the Bond films, but also things like the Matt Helm films Some of the more intentionally comedic spy spoofs But there's also so much thought that went into the writing. And you have all of these elements that exist in current society the way they have their GPS and all these surveillance and monitoring systems and these high tech self driving cars all kinds of different biological identification systems that you do start to see in the spy films of the late sixties and into the seventies but that are really thrown together here in a way that does feel very thought out And that also does kind of anticipate some of what we're dealing with in the real world today. And I should also note that A lot of films made in the Soviet Union and in Soviet satellite states during this period, especially in the seventies and eighties I think Reflect in some way on this issue of surveillance that you can never escape the eye of the state Certainly that started to show up in American culture as well, particularly with the advent of things like The internet and facial recognition photographs on social media and things like that. Here, I think it really has much more to do with this kind of paranoia about constant state surveillance. that the cats are really so good at using against the mice. And we even see it turned on inner mouse which I think is supposed to be a clever pun on Inpole. And they are really this sort of more international agency meant to protect mice, sort of An intelligence agency also a defensive agency on some level and I think The fact that this came out in the mid eighties at a time when so many Hungarian kids who would have seen it We're also living through the end of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. It's just such a fascinating portrait of a very, very specific time and place. And this scene on the plane is so amazing because so we basically have these kind of three parallel plots happening that definitely intertwine at different points. but you know, you have the sequences with the cats and everything that they're trying to do to just utterly destroy The mice in their world and their whole society . They're not just trying to destroy, you know mouse agents from Inner Mouse or Government officials, they're shown very clearly from the beginning Trying to destroy mice on every level of their society down to working class mice to mice who have money in our banking everyone But I think That plot is paralleled with You know, this sort of spy story about this very James Bond like mouse Who's looking for these secret plans that will allow them to have this amazing weapon, which of course we learn much later is a giant mechanized dog. calledall the cat catcher And he's trying to find these plans that are believed to be lost or hidden or possibly stolen Meanwhile, in order to give him more of a clear path to the plans, which he's heading to Tokyo, which is of course a hilarious pun on Tokyo But that's paralleled with this other sort of bumbling cop mouse. who's a decoy, but his story is just as interesting And so the fact that it moves at kind of this breakneck pace between the three main characters with these rats thrown in for good measure is just delightful And some of them really do feel like they could have stepped out of a U. S cartoon from the eighties. The way that some of these rats, especially the female rats are so sort of clever and diabolical while also being stereotypes at the same time You see it in everything from GI Joe to Gem and the holograms and so on But here they really spice things up. especially in their constant attempts during this part of the film to get one over on the mice and how convinced they are that they're so badass They aren't really always And I do think it's important and of course, I'll talk more about this when we get to the end of the film I do think it's important that the person who ultimately saves the day is the absolute bumbling cop. who almost doesn't make it out of this plane ride. And the fact that we see this Pain stick up situation with these cat terrorists where everyone gets killed except for him is pretty harrowing for a kids film Especially considering that element that I mentioned earlier, which is about to happen, where the mouse pilot gets shot in the head and you see it pretty explicitly And the bumbling mouse, who is just such a wonderful character The only reason he survives is because he's hiding out in the bathroom And these kind of idiotic bumbling, very slap sticky cop characters often overweigh, maybe they have a mustache That is a trope that goes all the way back to the thirties. I mean you see those characters Even in things like Universal horror films where they're used for some levity to kind of add humor to the situation and distract from the horror, however temporarily And I think that's exactly what's going on here where you know, he basically goes out of the frying pan into the fire. He somehow manages to survive This horrific violence on the plane, this absolute massacre that results in the plane crashing then to find himself somehow in the Amazon jungle where he barely survives the other animals in the jungle. He runs into a surprise waterfall. It's all the kind of stereotypical stuff that you see in so many cartoons But it's done with such joy and enthusiasm that it really does, I think hold your attention and feel like its own thing Eespecially because some of these stereotypical elements like from Cart chase, action movies and bank robbery movies and spy films. come at you so rapid fire that you never have a chance to get bored or to think about other films that they're referencing And I think a lot of that has to do with the sheer talent of the film's writer director combo So as I mentioned, Bella Ternovsky directed this film and is a really, really celebrated Hungarian artist and animator and is somebody who worked with Panonia a long time He actually started off studying philosophy and then moved on to Pannonia and became a draftsman artists and eventually a director And he's another one of those artists that I was talking about earlier who I think has had a little bit more of an international impact In the late seventies, he went to work in The Federal Republic of Germany at the studio called Infafilm and worked on a series there called Adventures of Pomulki that was made muchuch later So he's had a really, really long career going from basically the late sixties until the two thousands And he started off, I think, making some really interesting short films, like this one called modern Training Methods, which is all about this totally psycho coach and the ways that he's, you know, trying to train the athletes following him, which also feels like a commentary. on Soviet culture in a way because I think even in America from The sixties and seventies, you know, there's been this stereotype that the Soviets are so determined to have this better reputation than the Americans. They just push, push, push, whether it comes to things like the space race and astronauts or to the Olympics and athletes I think it really shows up in a funny way in something like modern training methods But he worked on so many great series in the late sixties and seventies and into the eighties, things that were really, really beloved. Something like Peter in the Tim machine from the late sixties. known as Peti in Hungarian, which is about, you know Peter and his friends and he has a dog and he gets into all these like typical kid adventures Modern training methods came a little bit after that in nineteen seventy Then the series that I mentioned earlier about the Mesga family that started off in the late sixties and went through the seventies was something that he worked on. And I think that was his first real success. It had a huge viewership. It caught on all throughout Eastern Europe even into central and Western Europe and even in places like Cuba very, very popular and I think Much like Cat City, it's an interesting precursor because it does combine different stereotypes and different genres Basically about this young teenager who has special abilities And so there are again, that blend of things like fantasy and science fiction that show up in such a wonderful way here that I think really are pronounced throughout Cat City when we see some of the spy gadgets, but also when we see these cats, really devoted to all these expensive ridiculous experiments. And their entire world seems to be devoted to just destroying mice Certainly you see that in other cartoons like Tom and Jerry is a classic example. But instead of it being shown as this kind of primal instinctual rivalry where the cat wants to eat the mouse and the mouse just wants to live in peace and survive Here it's twisted into something much more political and much more technological where the cats They don't just want to destroy the mice because they want to eat them. They want to destroy the mice because they want to steal anything that could be conceivably thought of as profit or money. And it really seems to be greed motivated and not food motivated And the fact that these cats are just so diabolically evil is really wonderful And certainly a director like Ternovsky working for Panonia at this time. You know, as I mentioned, there are so many of these series that feature animal protagonists in a much more allegorical way He would also go on to work on things like this series from the mid seventies that's translated in English as nextxt please that is a little bit more of a serious adult series And I think in Hungarian, it's mostly known as Dr. Bubo, but the protagonist is this owl who has trained to be a doctor, but he's not very good at it and he comes across a lot of obstacles when he tries to treat other animals in the forest and I think it does tow that line between entertaining cartoon and something that features much more serious drama and these kinds of moral lessons that kind of come from the earlier more educational series And I think the fact that so many of them do have these more adult qualities is so different from a lot of American animation where You know, we certainly have cartoons popular for older teenagers and for adults. And a lot of those are shown on separate channels that children wouldn't be watching. So the fact that so many of these Hungarian titles and series have so much intentional crossover appeal. where children can be entertained and maybe learn some lessons, Whereas watching the same show, adults could be entertained but by very different jokes and would also notice things that probably would go right over children's heads N that you don't see that in some American animated films, but here I think it's just so ever present that it takes on a very different quality. Another example of this is Something else that Ternovsky made, another really popular series I mentioned called Gustav which he made a little bit later in seventy six and ' seventy seven about this He's basically an everym whose identity changes a little bit from episode to episode or his backstory changes but he's really supposed to portray this depiction of modern life and all the sort of ups and downs that Hungarian citizens would have to deal with And he does dip into fantasy more as well a little bit later with something like Adventures of Pomulchi, which is a co production between East Germany, Austria and Hungary from the eighties, which he was actually working on at the same time as Cat City That's all about this delightful little goblin who works with this older carpenter who's really grumpy and there are lots of personality clashes But I think that feels like more of a traditional kids story in a lot of ways. And as I said, you know, he has had this really impressively long career. He continued making both animated series and animated films well into the two thousands and also continued exploring characters who are mice and cats in things like Mouse Road from nineteen ninety nine. Tales in two thousand one and he would even return to Cat City with a second film called Cat Catcher Twos Satan's Cat in two thousand seven And his partner in a lot of these and another really major important figure in Hungarian animation was Josef Nepp who is someone who's done everything from lots of writing and screenwriting to directing animation in his own right. Painting, composing, you name it And he wrote Cat City and a number of Ternovsky's other films and series. and I is really interesting because I think he's had collaborations and partnerships with a lot of the major figures in Hungarian animation from this period. And he's somebody else who kind of grew up at Penonia stududio. He started working there in the late fifties around the time that they gained a little bit more independence. And he started basically just as a painter and sort of rose from there and was encouraged to explore his creativity with things like directing and so much screenwriting. and something that I think is really distinctive about Cat City is its use of humor And the characters are surprisingly sarcastic. There are a lot of jokes that make use of things like irony that as I said earlier, I think are probably hard to translate. evenven though watching this with English subtitles, it's still very funny. So I can't imagine how much funnier it is in Hungarian. He was really known for that distinctive sense of humor He started off working with animators like Tiwar Shernock and Attila Dargay who were really important in the animation industry And again, is another person who seemingly has worked in every genre of animation from things like ads and more artsy short films. like he made this short film called Passion in nineteen sixty one And he's the one who basically created that Gustav character that I mentioned. And it seems like with every decade He's had different key and really important collaborators. He would also work with Yosef Gemesh, who's another major, major Hungarian animation director and Schult Richley But he and Belaonnovsky, I think knew each other from pretty early in both their careers because they started working at Panonia so young and so early in its history. And the Ternovsky short film modern traraining methods that I mentioned, you know, he helped write that So they've had this really kind of wonderful partnership off and on throughout many, many decades of their lives. And I think it must be so rewarding to be able to create art and write scripts that aren't just in one kind of genre niche or one particular thematic bubble And something that you see in Hollywood by contrast I think a lot of filmmakers tend to get stuck in these much more narrow margins. L a lot of horror directors might go on to make other genre films, but they rarely make what's considered a classic drama, or they rarely make art house films here. And so I think especially with animators, it's so nice to see so many of these really key figures involved in so many different types of animation and so many different genres. And I think When people are allowed to really flesh out their backgrounds and play in different areas You just get increasingly creative works, which is of course, where Cat City comes from And before I move on from talking about Nep's career, one thing that I did want to mention about this script is it was apparently inspired by a song which is possibly why music is of central importance to this, even though it doesn't occur frequently enough that I would actually call it a musical. But apparently the song that the rats sing about how badass they are was inspired by this Manhattan Tfer song called Four Brothers And allegedly that was the inspiration that led to the entire rest of the script And it is filled with so many wonderful references. L you basically have these evil cats as boond villains, but the way that the boond films feel so international Something that I haven't had a chance to talk about yet is the fact that so many of these characters do have kind of international names like This sort of number two character with his mechanical hand Wh is just terrible to his assistant and is constantly attacking and berating him. I mean, he's covered in bandages. He's Mr. Toyfel And in German, Tufel means devil. But apparently in Hungarian, it also means sour cream. and they talk a lot about things that cats like. sour cream, of course being one of those things, but in a way that sounds kind of sour twisted. and so it's It's greatreat that you see some of these name puns reflect in different languages. Like the main cat who I think is supposed to be Blofeld from Bond, or at least a reference to Blofeld or something like Dr. Claw from the Inspector Gadget series. He's Mr. Gato, which of course just means Mr. Cat in Italian or Spanish And you see that kind of peppered throughout the film and I will definitely bring it up more as it occurs But I think it it's also something that really keeps you guessing and once again makes this film transcend so many of its tropes. Like the fact that it starts off with this Star Wars episode four inspired Ticker that gives you the history of this You know, civilization where you have these cats who are trying to kill these mice It makes you think that this is going to be a much more overt sci fi story And it seems to be placed on this totally different planet. But it really just in a lot of ways feels like a cartoonish over the top version of Earth. Even down to the reference to things like the Amazon jungle And you know, we have these shipliners and pirates on the sea and Ultimately, we go to a variation of Tokyo And this sequence here where Grabovsky, this you know world class agent who has all of these skills and all this experience and seemingly is just trying to retire and take it easy The fact that he winds up in disguise on this cruise liner or You know, enormous, enormous ship that is supposed to be carrying goods That's something right out of a Bond film. I mean, Bond, of course was a naval lieutenant and a commander And you see so, so many great parallels, but the fact that they throw so many additional things into this is amazing. Like the Amazon Jungle sequences and my favorite characters who I don't want to talk about yet because they are about to emerge on the scene shortly But the fact that this whole sequence where Grobovsky is making his way presumably east to try to get to Pokyo The fact that the ship is beset by pirates who seemingly have nothing to do with the rest of the story, they're just there to cause more violence and chaos. and to make things more complicated for Grabovski so that We can really see how great he is at his job. It's just another kind of wonderful element to this film. And there are so many of these great set pieces that involve not just the cats but also some of these characters from inner mouths And I think what makes this work so well as a satire in a lot of ways is The kind of ultimate evil that's presented throughout Cat City is not about a specific ideology It doesn't have to do with communism versus democracy. There's no lengthy explanation about government on this fictional planet or in this fictional country It has to do almost solely with greed whichich is I think what makes it feel so universally relatable reggardless of what country you're watching it in or what you might know or not know about Hungarian cinema or Hungarian animation or even what decade you're watching it in. I mean, it certainly feels pretty relevant now in a lot of ways And throughout the film, I think you not only see these pop culture mashups and references, But also references to culture from different periods like the forties and fifties and even into the sixties And something that I think is so interesting about its view of evil is The way that the cats are, as I said, you know, not really focused on any kind of biological animosity with the mice They're just really, really greedy And Toyful is almost presented as this kind of big business CEO type figure with the way he's dressed And especially with the way his office looks and you know, he smokes these cigars He really looks like hes stepped out of thirties or forties US gangster film And there are so many of those characters who appear to be businessmen by day, successful businessmen who play by the rules When really they're also mob bosses and they run these different syndicates And I think that's why the character is so successful Of course, even he is reporting back to a bigger boss this kind of Mr. Gato almost multi millionaire type figure who, as I said is so reminiscent of someone like Blofeld in the Bond series But the thing that I think is so interesting about Gato is He not only appears to be kind of obese, But he loves luxury. He loves money, he loves parties Unlike a lot of other villainous kind of overlord characters, he's not really shown to be doing anything of his own accord Rather, he's just kind of this super manager Who's instructing other people to commit violence for him While he sits back and reaps the benefits And I think that's part of why this film feels so compelling even when you're watching it you know forty years later, because we're still dealing with these same issues and they really don't have anything to do with a specific country or a specific political ideology And there are a lot of parallel cartoons from the eighties where the villains are shown to be outright gang members If you think about something like Captain Planet in the US or something like GI Joe And sometimes they have things like government authority and military authority or political authority, but here there's none of that. It's also not suggested that there's anyone in those types of authority positions who could counter them. It seems like that's just what cat society has been boiled down to And I think when you see A lot of the Hungarian critiques of Soviet communism, like This is something that Miklos Jang show, the more experimental art house director I mentioned. Something that he's really known for is critiquing Soviet government from a more left wing, truly Marxist position. So so often in American culture, when we see critiques of communism and of the Soviet Union, It's this very kind of polarized Cold War mentality where You either love freedom and democracy or you hate freedom and you're a communist Of course it is certainly not that black and white and not that simple historically But a lot of those American portrayals of the Soviets was just really, really negative aggressive propaganda But here, instead, I think you're seeing a more genuinely leftist Marxist critique in the sense that the people who are in charge of society as in many decades of the Soviet Union have become incredibly wealthy, they're incredibly power hungry. They rule in these small cabals and it resembles totalitarianism much more than true communism. And so through a lot of Yang Sh's more allegorical films, which I mentioned earlier He really tries to imagine how we can overthrow this kind of autocracy and This basically gangster mentality within government to have a more communal communistic society that benefits everyone. And I definitely think you see some echoes of that here because The mice are presented across the board as such positive characters They work together, none of them are greedy Even someone like Grabvsky who is trying to retire, even though he's obviously great at his job He's willing to be called back to take on this mission because he's told how important it is. And of course, because in any story like this, you know You have the super spy character who is the only one who can do the job. So of course, they have to step up to the plate We also have, I think, such an important contrast in lazy Dick who I think sometimes is translated as lusty Dick. and he's another one, this sort of bumbling sergeant figure He's another one whose name has a lot of different language puns. So Dick means fat in German and if Lusty Dick is one of the other translations Lustig means funny in German. and so I think, you know, you just have this whole series of Language play in so many different languages, which is another thing that gives it that great international feel. And speaking of international characters, we have finally arrived at my absolute favorite characters in the film are these Mexican Bendido revolutionary vampire bats. who are just absolutely incredible and really emerge from kind of out of nowhere in the best way And what's so compelling about them is much like in one of the sppaghetti Westerns. So there are these whole series of spaghetti Western films. And if you're not familiar Spghetti Westerns take a lot of the tropes of classic American Golden Age of Hollywood westerns and reimagine them in the late sixties and early seventies But they're made in Italy and they're often co productions with Spain. So They have a lot to say about What was going on in Italian society at the time? Certainly lots of references to communism in those films as well, but there's this specific subset of the spaghetti western called the Zapota Western. And in the Zapoto Westerns, you see a ton of these characters like The wonderful vampire bats who are bandits, but they're also revolutionaries and they're Dressed exactly like the vampire bats here. They often wear these kind of gun belts And they're great at shooting pistols They're very chaotic. they're often very funny and they are presented as this kind of Chaotic evil, chaotic neutral type of characters who can either be for the protagonist or against them seemingly with No real motivation either way just however the wind is blowing that day. And they often wind up helping these protagonists to overcome these really greedy capitalistic forces And so many of them start with the kind of bank robbery sequences that we see in the beginning of Cat City. So I just love that we have these Zapota Western references embedded in here. And perhaps it wasn't intentional for the references to be quite that specific, but it's very hard for me as a fan of those films to watch something like this and not think immediately of the Zapata Westerns. becausecause they always travel in these kind of communal groups and they are potentially very violent and dangerous, much like the vampire bats. They have this real sense of humor and comedy, this kind of lust for life that here is translated into a literal lust for life via their lust for blood But the fact that they spare Sergeant Lazy Dick because he's a great musician which is this wonderful little detail that kind of gets used throughout the film and it seems to be his sort of main redeeming trait Like he's very sweet and kind and goodhearted and brave despite the fact that he comes up against all of these overwhelming obstacles that seem like they're too much for him He winds up using the power of music to overcome a surprising number of situations. Namely, the vampire bats decide, okay, you know what? we're not going to eat you for dinner because we love your ability to play music and we're having such a great time that instead We will become friends with you and we will even help save your people because we like you so much. Of course you get this great flash at the end, where we see that Sergeant Lzy Dick has actually been bitten, even though he maybe hasn't been killed and is now a vampire mouse And it's absolutely adorable It's also such a great example of how it's sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that the film's main plot is Krabovsky's search for the plans for this super weapon that is supposed to help them defeat the cats which winds up being sort of a red herring. It's just kind of a reason to put them all on this quest. and to work with each other and work against each other And I think that's also why it feels like a parody, not in the sense that it's making fun of some of these tropes, but which it definitely does at times But I think it also celebrates them. Like these vampire bat Mexican revolutionary characters I think could feel much more racist than they actually do. And certainly in many, many children's cartoons, especially in Hollywood in US television cartoons do see a lot of these really polarized tropes and character types. And they often haven't aged well But with the vampire bats here, I think it's really not that bad because it feels like a celebration of them rather than a mockery of who they are And that sense of kind of optimism and joy and celebration that runs through this film, even though it has so many crazy villain characters, is one of the really nice kind of more sentimental qualities of something like Cat City And I sometimes find Films from the eighties and nineties that are meant to spoof someome of these beloved genres and subgenres a little bit gradating because it feels like They're spoofing the genre in a way where they fundamentally don't like it and they're making fun of it and they want you to laugh at it But this doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like Partly a parody of certain tropes, like especially the Sy films But even more than a parody, it feels like a celebration Like it feels like the filmmakers just really loved all of these different things happening around the world in pop culture and found a way to combine so many of them in one film I mean, here we have Gbobsky arrive at Tokyo, AK Pokyo And I think this is maybe some of the racial stereotyping that is the most questionable when you watch it forty years after the fact He still likes and respects these characters and to me, that's sort of the bottom line of how I feel about different kinds of cultural representations in films like this, especially films that are meant to be more comedic and more lighthearted But here, you know, he's going to see this brilliant scientist. He happens to meet This character named Chinos San, who he winds up going on a further adventure with and they fall in love. And so there is a lot here that despite all the violence and all of the really wild crime tropes that are used Some of it is genuinely quite wholesome. And I should say that Chinoan, who we are about to meet any second now That's yet another really adorable naming pun, Cinos being Hungarian for pretty in my understanding. And there are some that I actually haven't gotten a chance to mention yet. So I've talked about Mr. Gato as being Italian or Spanish for cat Mr. Tiffel as representing Tuiffel in German for Devil, but also Tefel in Hungarian for sour cream There's the gang the big black gangster cat who they call Schwartz, but he wants to be called Fan Schwartz. Schwartz means black in German, which is so, so frequently used to designate villains in a lot of these series. I mean, think about Darth Vader and his entire wardrobe But you also have his assistant Sephronic And I think Sffron is supposed to be a reference to the herb and the reddish color. and he of course, is a ginger cat, even though it's kind of hard to see that because he's covered in bandages. for pretty much the entire film because he gets just totally destroyed by Mr. Tuiffel, who seemingly takes everything out on him And something that this film does really well that you see in a lot of spy thrillers, especially the Bond films and any Bond spoofs, is this idea that whoever the baddest villain is or the biggest scariest villain They always take things out on their underlings And so they're just kind of evil all around. Like they're not nice to anyone. And here, you know, you see Mr. Gato constantly threatening Mr. Tiffel You see Mr. Tufel threatening and physically terrorizing and abusing. phronic And Sfranak in turn is awful to his adorable kitten child Kathy just wants to be friends with a mouse. She's literally not doing anything wrong and the mice in contrast are just so different to that. and that really I think polarizing sense of character is also reflected in their sizes. So anyone who's good is small and seemingly weak or meek or defenseless, and anyone large, including the rats, is automatically some kind of villain. And something that I think shows up in a ton of Bond films and cartoons is this idea that the bad guys are also kind of enhanced in some way. Like Tuel has that same kind of metallic hand as Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget, which I've mentioned. and he uses those razor sharp claws to slice up soophronic anytime something goes wrong He also has that great eye patch Wh is such a staple of cartoonish villains Whether it's in animated films or live action ones. And I think those little touches are so wonderful and the film isn't really in a hurry to unveil them all at once. Like with these rat characters, it really takes a lot of time Towards the end of the first act letting us get to know them and letting us get to know that, you know, some of them are really, really stereotypical and The names are really funny. So the two female rats, I think in the original English dub. they're translated as cookie and candy and Cookie whose name, I think originally is supposed to be Pukey perer counterpart is Candy, who's the smart, serious, more kind of ironic villainous one Her name is actually Pissy. And so Pukey, AKA Cookie is the sort of standard typical dumb blonde which you see these types of characters show up everywhere from spy spoofs to gangster movies. And they are certainly all over eighties cinema, usually more adult cinema And so it's just so fascinating to me to see some of these films that take similar themes to something like Cat City Like certainly many, many Disney films, which I will mention shortly and have such a different interpretation of it than this film, which leans much more into the adult themes. Like when you think about even the vampire bats as being these characters who save the day They really are that kind of chaotic or at least Chaotic neutral, if not chaotic evil And they let him know right away they want to suck his blood. And I think you wouldn't really see a character like that in a Disney movie, let alone a whole group of those characters let alone have them save the day in a super chaotic way at the end of the film And so you get the sense throughroughout Cat City, that unlike a lot of more conventional kids movies There are no real moral rules here. There are no specific behaviors that the hero has to follow O than he just kind of has to protect the mice around him And he has to be willing to sacrifice Whereas the cats can just do absolutely whatever they want and nothing bad really happens to them until they're brainwashed at the very end Typically Hollywood films, especially animated ones require a lot more rigid moral rules for the heroes or the good guys. and this provides such an interesting contrast to that idea There are also other things here that make this feel more adult in a lot of ways. Like there's almost constant black comedy whichich is something that you do see in certain American animated films, but certainly not the majority of them that would have been consumed by children or meant for children You know, everything from that great rat song about how they love murdering mice. They'll do anything it takes to murder mice. they will even taxidermy them for you, which I think is the best line of that song. But it's like every character who comes in the line of fire, there's some sort of blackly comedic element. Even this idea of, you know, the plane massacre and the plane crash, the fact that the mouse pilot gets shot in the head and that's what makes the plane crash and also kills the cats on board It's just some really deranged stuff to see in a kids cartoon Also, these very creepy kind of body horror like elements I mean, I've already mentioned Mr. Tuifel's various enhancements like his metal claw and his eye patch and he has this kind of crazy like Ruby eye underneath that's revealed That looks like some sort of gemstone But he's not the only one Grabovsky has some sort of eye implant that takes pictures of things which I think is supposed to be kind of a funny twist on photographic memory. And you do get the sense, which I mentioned before that it's not only that he's a super spy, but he either has some sort of superpowered enhancements or abilities that allow him to be even better at his job than just your average you know, intermouse agent. And that's why he's able to survive and go up against the cats for so long. And really his downfall and the only thing that gets him kind of arrested or imprisoned, however, temporarily, is the fact that he cares more about Chinosan than he does himself But there's this really, really creepy moment, which is coming up very soon where they are captured And in order to make Krabovsky shut up While they're tied up and restrained, it looks like there's a padlock going through his mouth implying sort of that maybe they've tied his lips shut or sewn his lips shut in some way It's really horrifying and also quite surreal in a lot of ways Definitely the vampire bats also apply to this theory as well. does tend to skate that comedic line between showing absolutely horrific violence happening to a character and having them die or sometimes having them survive. In that, I think there are some references to something like Looney tunes where you often have animals just hell bent on killing each other by whatever means necessary. Something like the Coyote and the Roadrunner, the entire plot is that the cooyote is trying to murder the rooadrunner. And this of course shows up in Bugs Bunny and Sylvester and Tweety Bird. and is really the standard, I think of those racier cartoons that were also meant for an adult audience that are so so far from some of the more wholesome lifting Disney cartoons, but I think it's what makes some of this genuinely very funny And the thing that always sort of amazed me about something like this is this idea that you have some sort of sexual content sneak in. So there are a couple of sexy cat characters Most of them either work for Mr. Gatto O you do have the pissy and pukey rat characters Who are supposed to be female stereotypes is a little bit of cat nudity, I guess you could call it And it really comes from kind of out of nowhere. and it sort of says, okay, you know, you thought there was a line that we weren't gonna cross, but here we are, we're gonna cross it. And of course here, things have descended into pretty much all out warfare where you have the inner mice agents who are trying to fight against these cats, but it seems like every single cat is against them and is, you know leaning out of windows of residential buildings Just trying to cut down these mice with as many bulls as possible It's pretty wild But I want to talk briefly about The remaining cast and crew members that I haven't mentioned as we are getting very close to the end of the film So this, I think is such an impressive production because you have a team of almost sixty artists and animators working on the film And I think That can only happen when you have a major studio dedicated to animation like Panonia. And certainly there have been a few great studios like Studio Ghibli in Japan Disney, of course. more recent studios like Pixar But here it's just amazing to think that you have this huge team of people Many of whom have been working together for decades on these various projects. and so they really are extremely talented. And, you know, bold enough to do things like putting this super disturbing padlock piercing through Grabovsky's mouth and showing this totally bizarre evil cat party with the weird cat nudity that I mentioned earlier that I'm sure, you know, fired Plenty of kids' imaginations in the late eighties in Hungary But you also have a team of voice actors. working on this who are absolutely wonderful. and a lot of the people working on this, I don't think you will recognize their names unless you're really, really familiar with Hungarian television and more popular cinema, Hungarian animation But a lot of the major actors on this worked on something like a hundred, two hundred films and You know, TV series and they're just hugely prolific Grabovsky is voiced by Lazlo Senko, who was a Hungarian actor J just in dozens and dozens of films and TV shows between the late sixties and The late twenty tenens His most famous film other than Cat City is probably this nineteen ninety six Hungarian production called The Conquest, which is this historical drama, kind of historical epic that stars Italian cult icon Franco Niro, which is why it got a little bit more international play A lot of the people, as I said, voicing these main characters and even a lot of the side characters were just huge hard working, prolific figures in Hungarian television and cinema Like Mr. Toyel is voiced by Miklos Benedc Mr. Gato by Yanosh Kormendi. Pissy by Elona Berish, who also has a ton of credits Maxie Pocock who voices the lead Vampire Bat is Gulia Badrogi Sephronic is Peter Halman and you know, these people have huge, incredible careers and Even though I think this film is firing on all cylinders in terms of the animation and especially the writing and the dialogue and a lot of the wonderful humor and the language puns built in The voice acting is also Absolutely top notch. What really blows me away is the way that Catsity ends So, you know, Mr. Gato and Mr. Tufel all convene with all of the other Rich cat villains at this party And of course they managed to kidnap Grabovsky and That horrifying lock contraption in his mouth And they find the microfilm with the plans for the anti cat weapon and they're able to destroy it, not realizing that Grbovsky has Either a device in his eye or just some sort of crazy photographic memory. so ultimately they can recreate it You know, it's such a classic trope of a lot of Bond films, a lot of spy thrillers to have this kind of sequence where you think There's no way the hero can get out of this. They are absolutely about to be killed am This type of ending, which I think can best be described as a deis ex Machina, meaning you have this Random seemingly random. Often all powerful force come out of nowhere. and conclude things in the hero's favor. But here, Because it's not some sort of, you know scientist with some kind of device, but it's these bandido revolutionary vampire bats who are waging war from the sky and just killing cats byy the dozens seemingly just by shooting them. It really is such a surprise but delightful ending that is also shockingly violent. And one of my favorite things about actual ending where we see the mice able to overcome the cats. It's not that they've gotten the cats to sign some sort of accord and promise to behave themselves. It's not that they've you know, imprison and deposed Mr. Gato and Mr. Tufel and Their evil cat crime syndicate is replaced with nicer cats like Kathy inststead Part of the secret weapon, it's not just that they're able to build this kind of mechca bulldog who can keep the cats at bay. It's that they're basically putting these necklaces on the cats to brainwash them and make them docile which is really disturbing And as I mentioned a little bit ago, I don't think that's something that you would see in a more conventional mainstream American film because it does feel like kind of murky moral territory where the mice are saying, you know what? we just want to live. And in order to live, we're not going to try to punish these cats. We're not going to try to kill them all. We're just going brainwash them and neutralize them so that they'll just be kind of in a field playing with flowers and butterflies won't be able to hurt anyone. and in case they figure out how to take the brainwashing out of the situation. And then they'll have to contend with this giant meecca buulldog who resembles mechagzilla in certain ways. and is this absolutely terrifying kind of larger than life figure? that is really just an enhanced version of what I was talking about earlier where Your power is equated directly with your size and he is huge compared to these cats, muchuch bigger than a dog would be to a cat in real life and it's absolutely terrifying. I think he's actually eating and destroying some of these cats, although maybe he just has to eat them in order for them to be neutralized and brainwashed because we have this great input output system, but it does look pretty horrific And it basically looks like he's eating them and shitting them out and they're wearing these sort of bow tie necklaces and they're all just kind of nice cats now and can live happily ever after. while brainwashed and then they won't bother the mice ever again And it is a very, very wonderful but disturbing ending And I should mention which I brought up briefly earlier, there was a sequel made much, much later about this mouse named Stanley who finds a tribe of cats Somewhere in the jungle of what is supposed to be Africa. Who? aren't brainwashed and they want to take the world back And so they summon this demon cat named Malok. to help defeat the mice once and for all And it's, you know, it's great that they were able to make another one of these films. I don't think it had the viewership or the popularity of Cat City But I wish there had been a whole series of these because they are absolutely wonderful. and Honestly, I'm so glad that this is being introduced to a new generation of cinema fans and animation fans And my only wish is that there was A whole series of films about the Mexican vampire bats. But I hope you enjoyed Cat City as much as I have. . Hello, this is Eron West. I am the author of the A twenty four New Wave. In this book, I look at A twenty four's output and I make the argument that we are in a newew Wave movement right now. A twenty four plays a major role. This book has a supplemental podcast where each episode is a brief conversation about an A twenty four related topic, whether an actor, director, or even a genre As I continue research for the book and conduct interviews, I expect to record podcast episodes with people involved with the company. You can find the podcast at cinagjourneys d. com or wherever you find podcasts, and we are proud to be members of the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network. Hey, this is Jason Kleberg from The Force five Podcast, a show that forces a guest to come up with a movie themed topop five list topic and then we reveal our ps on air. Top five heist films, topop five tear jerkers, top five movie dogs. Every show you'll be asking yourself, what would be on my list? Guests include directors, screenwriters, actors, podcasters, musicians, authors and even a professional wrestler. Subscribe to the Force five podcast and you won't just be a listener, you'll be a list nerd. The Force five podcast, available wherever you are listening now Thank you for listening To hear more shows from the Someone's favorite Productions podcast network Please select the link in the description