This doesn't end well.
Mouse Wreckers is a 1949 Looney Tunes cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones.
It's the fifth of seven cartoons starring mischievous mice Hubie and Bertie. The mice arrive at a nice-looking middle-class home which they decide to move into. Unfortunately, when they look inside they see Claude Cat (himself a recurring character
), who as the trophies on the stand attest is a champion mouser. Hubie and Bertie have to get Claude out of the house while never letting him know they're there, lest he catch them. The mice then begin a campaign of terror, lowering themselves down the chimney with string, playing an increasingly elaborate set of pranks on Claude in order to frighten him out of the house.
Robert McKimson remade this cartoon nine years later as Gopher Broke, with Mac and Tosh the Goofy Gophers taking Hubie and Bertie's roles and the Barnyard Dawg taking Claude's role. Jones himself would revisit this plot in 1965 with his Tom and Jerry cartoon, The Year of the Mouse.
Tropes:
- Bindle Stick: How Hubie and Bertie are carrying their meager belongings when they arrive at the house.
- Big Ball of Violence: Happens when Hector attacks Claude, but it's obvious that Claude is getting the worst of it—one time Claude pokes out of the dust cloud with Hector's hand around his neck, another time Hector pokes out wielding a club, etc.
- Bowdlerization:
- The version shown on CBS' The Bugs Bunny/Roadrunner Show in the 1970s and 1980s severely shortened the part where Hubie and Bertie tie Claude's tail to a boulder, push the boulder off the chimney, and send Claude careening through the house (going out a window, up a ladder, down a rain gutter, through a kitchen table filled with dishes, and back in the living room, slamming into a trash can lid). The edited on CBS version goes from Hubie pushing the boulder and Claude flying out the window to Claude magically back in the house and getting slammed into the trash can lid. The CBS version also cut the very end where Hubie and Bertie roast cheese over the fire (why they did it is unknown, but popular theories include: a) the censors didn't like the fact that Hubie and Bertie didn't get their comeuppance for gaslighting Claude the Cat, b) to cover up the ending that was cut before theatrical release, c) they thought Hubie lighting a match would lead to kids playing with matches, or d) it was a time cut to make room for more commercials).
- ABC's version shown on The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show leaves in the part that CBS cut, but edited some other scenes they found too violent and inappropriate for children:
- The beginning where Bertie wallops Claude in the head with a piece of firewood.
- Hubie and Bertie siccing Hector on Claude had the actual fight shortened.
- Hubie and Bertie planting a stick of dynamite under Claude's pillow, Claude getting caught in the explosion, and Claude running to the bathroom to chug some nerve tonic.
- The syndicated version of The Merrie Melodies Show only shortened the fight between Claude and Hector.
- Comedic Sociopathy: One of the more sociopathic Warner Brothers cartoons (and that says a lot, considering that most of Chuck Jones' work revels in Black Comedy, a lot of which is hidden underneath an unassuming facade or, in the case of the Pepe Le Pew cartoons, a gorgeous and romantic one). After all, what we're seeing is two mice invade a cat's home and drive him insane so that they can move in.
- Gaslighting: How the mice drive Claude out. They whack him with sticks, they shove a stick of dynamite under his pillow, they insert a big mean bulldog (Hector) into the house, all the while taking care that Claude never sees them. The finale is an elaborate prank in which the mice take everything in the living room and nail it to the ceiling, except for the light, which they fix to the floor. Claude wakes up, finds that gravity seems to have turned upside down on him, and finally breaks, fleeing the house in terror.
- Karma Houdini: Hubie and Bertie receive no comeuppance for terrorizing Claude, the cartoon ending with them two of them succeeding in driving him out and taking over the house. There originally was supposed to be an ending where Claude tries to get back in the house through the chimney to get his revenge, only for Claude to land in the fireplace and shoot out the top like a rocket. Sadly, the scene was cut before its release and now airs with an incomplete ending (not that it would matter, as the original ending still have the mice come out on top and get away with what they did).
- Napoleon Delusion: Claude looks up what is happening to him in a book of psychological disorders. He finds the page he was looking for, tears it up... and folds it into a hat so he can pretend to be Napoleon.
- No More for Me: After an early prank, Claude grabs a stepladder, climbs up to a ceiling light fixture, fishes out a bottle of "Cat Nip", hurls it out the window, and recites a pledge.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: While we don't see it, we do see Hector's vision turn red, which suggest this trope."WHY YOU...!" (growling)
- Shout-Out: One of Claude's trophies looks like a cat version of the Academy Award.
