The Hep Cat
The Hep Cat
NR | 03 October 1942 (USA)
The Hep Cat Trailers

A cat-about-town fancies himself such an irresitible "hunk" he momentarily resembles Victor Mature. His wooing of a cute kitten gets derailed by a prankster dog using a cat hand puppet to trap him.

Reviews
Peereddi

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

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Grimossfer

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

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KnotStronger

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

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Jenni Devyn

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

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Edgar Allan Pooh

. . . of the creepy white female cat shown in full body only from 1:26 through 1:31 of the six-minute Warner Bros. animated short THE HEP CAT, but few people will be able to Unsee those perverse five seconds of film. Adeline sports a human female face and butt, along with four slender womanly legs wearing four stiletto high-heeled shoes! Otherwise, she is a fairly ordinary feline. Pursued by the Black title character (whose singing and tap-dancing seem to fall upon her deaf ears), this milky dream pus--ah, cat gives her Dark Stalker a literal Cold Shoulder. Apparently, the "leans and the fats" THE HEP CAT croons about comprising his 103 previous conquests were 100% feline and 0% Fraulein. I remember that one of my Great Uncles made a joke at a family gathering about an "X-Rated" cartoon character of the 1900s called FRITZ THE CAT or something. The way I recall it, he was immediately exiled outside for a "smoke break" (even though it was Winter) for bringing up such an unsavory subject with children present. Too bad Warner cartoon producer Leon Schlesinger failed to send his animators for a smoke break when they pipe-dreamed up Adeline!

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ccthemovieman-1

I love to hear the slang of the day, whatever decade, and this one has a lot of it of the '40s beginning with the title. For those you don't know, "hep" used to mean "hip" or "cool" or whatever. Here, it's cat who struts his stuff in words, song and dance. He spots this hot female feline and is smitten. The trouble is this stupid dog - and he is portrayed as really stupid at times, clever at other times - keeps interfering. Getting back to the slang: just read the note the Hep Cat receives one day: "Dear Gorgeous Hunk, If you would like to pitch some woo - come back to the fence for a rendezvous!" I love it! Words like "hunk," come back around every other generation but "woo" has been out of our vocabulary since about 1950.Unfortunately, this was the only funny thing in the cartoon. I enjoyed the artwork and the direction the humor was not much. There seems to be a big difference in a lot of these Looney Tunes, depending on the decade. The early '50s still hold up well today, but some of these '40s are too dated to be funny.

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buzzdav4

I am a huge fan of this cartoon. I'll skip all the editorializing and simply list my favorite parts: the short vignette of the cold-shouldered little female kitty , with her high-heeled feet, moving in beat to a fine boogie-woogey score, and the resulting tongue-wagging suitor panting along to the beat is hilariously sexy (I can't believe the censors missed it).And the horny tomcat romances the pussycat puppet, excitedly feeling her posterior (the dog's nose)--finally receiving a kiss, springing out erect (!) and then streaming down the steps in a flaccid puddle...incredible-! The cat & dog chase scene is a little tiring, and a letdown after the hot & heavy courting. But--this is one heckuva cartoon. Eleven stars.

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movieman_kev

A swinging hep cat is trying to make it with a cute female cat but a dog is in the way at every step. When I usually think of the name Robert Clampett, the word that automatically comes to mind is "sheer greatness", which only makes this short all the more disappointing. In fact if I didn't read the title screen I would've had to no clue he even made this short. In other Clampett cartoons you can come in at any point and sit down to watch and KNOW he made that given short. His hand in it was usually that great. Sadly, this one I don't like nearly as much as it's not a good barometer of his major talents. This animated short can be seen on Disc 4 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2.My Grade: C

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