User Reviews

Written by Tedd Pierce and directed by Chuck Jones, "Odor-able Kitty" is the first Warner Bros. cartoon to feature a famous French skunk who is an irrepressible "ladies' man": Pepe Le Pew. But what an unusual Pepe Le Pew cartoon! (If you haven't yet seen this film, DON'T read any further.) In "Odor-able Kitty," Pepe chases after a MALE cat! No, Pepe is not a homosexual; he simply believes the male cat to be a female skunk. And then, at the end of this cartoon, it turns out that Pepe is not really Pepe at all! He is Henry, a Brooklyn skunk with a wife and two kids. Thankfully, in most of the later Pepe Le Pew cartoons, these little flaws are rectified as Pepe becomes a more fully developed character.

Here are my favorite scenes from "Odor-able Kitty." When the male cat first disguises himself as a skunk (so that he would be left alone), he dares an old lady to swat him on the rear with a broom, but before she does, he has a smug expression on his face as his tail points toward his Limburger odor! Shortly afterward he walks into a meat shop, and after a brief pause, everyone screams and rushes out! Thanks to the brilliance of composer/orchestrator Carl Stalling, we hear a familiar sprightly violin theme as Pepe/Henry pounces after the cat; contrast that with some sluggish saxophones to indicate the cat's gradual slowing down in escaping from the amorous skunk. AND, in another moment of quirkiness, we see BUGS BUNNY (actually the cat in disguise) saying his "Eh, what's up, Doc?" catchphrase while we hear the Warner Bros. cartoon theme "Merrily We Roll Along."

In addition to "Merrily We Roll Along," there are three other songs in "Odor-able Kitty" that I recognize, again attesting the brilliance of Carl Stalling. These three songs are "You're Just an Angel in Disguise" (a snippet of which is sung by the cat when he first disguises himself as a skunk), "Trade Winds" (heard while the cat rests contentedly, his belly full of delicious meat), and "It Had to Be You" (heard several times throughout this short, particularly during Pepe's/Henry's first appearance).

One day a red alley cat is fed up of being kicked by people and attacked by dogs and muses that life would be better if he were a skunk. He then paints himself black with a white stripe down his back and adds a bit of Limburger cheese to make him stink. At first life couldn't be better for him, the dog flees and the butcher abandons his shop letting the cat walk off with a pile of meat. Just as he is thinking everything is perfect he is noticed by a real skunk, not just any skunk but the overly amorous Pepé Le Pew. Pepé mistakes the poor cat for a female skunk and pursues him thinking his protestations are just shyness. Our poor cat thinks he has escaped when he throws a skunk skin from a tall building so that Pepé will think he is dead, at first it seems to work but as he sneaks off Pepé sees him and instantly forgets the dead skunk. In the end the cat realises he was better off being kicked and attacked than being lusted after by a randy skunk... there is a nice ending for the skunk too when his wife finds out what he has been up to.

This was a fairly funny introduction to Pepé Le Pew who back then was just overly amorous but now looks like a randy sexually harassing stalker, although he was punished for his behaviour in the end.

. . . of Pepe Le Pew. It turns out that Mr. Le Pew of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies fame actually is a married skunk named Henry. Dissatisfied with his Life with Wife and Kids (there are at least two little ones in the picture), Henry yearns for a gayer Bisexual existence. When Henry's spouse (not named here) gives him a severe beating toward the end of ODOR-ABLE KITTY, the handwriting's on the wall: No more Mr. Nice Skunk. From now on, Hank will roam free under the Nom De Plum of "Pepe," johnny-on-the-spot to badger practically anything that moves--male, female, or other--for sexual favors. Henry\Pepe won't take suicide for an answer, as the tom cat who's actually the main character of ODOR-ABLE KITTY, learns here. Henry\Pepe is a textbook serial sexual harasser, and over the decades he's served as a role model for millions of victimizers who later protest that they were "Just Funning," or "playing doctor." One might wonder exactly HOW such a clear case of incipient perversion got MPAA American film censor board Seal of Approval #9494. But any student of Tawdry Town can answer that one. The MPAA's original logo is based upon a Vatican seal, and many of the same clerics who play "shuffle the pederast pedophile" have controlled the MPAA for the past 81 years.

Chuck Jones's 'Odor-able Kitty' is the cartoon that introduced Pepe Le Pew to the world… sort of. There are a few key differences between the Pepe we know and love (or hate, in the case of some people) and the character in this cartoon. For one, the disguised cat who Pepe amorously pursues in 'Odor-able Kitty' is distinctly male. Also, Pepe is exposed as a fraud whose real name is Henry at the cartoon's climax, his French accent dropping away when his wife and family turn up. Pepe is not even the lead character here, the focus favouring the put-upon cat who disguises himself as a skunk to scare off his enemies. For the most part, the storyline largely follows the usual format of a Pepe Le Pew cartoon but Pepe's aggressive courtship is lacking the usual wisecracks and straight to camera addresses that make him such a great character. He is also not nearly as handsome as he would become and rather awkwardly animated. In fact, 'Odor-able Kitty' is a fairly ugly and clumsy looking cartoon all round. Its main source of appeal comes from its concept which was original at this stage before it became the template for every Pepe Le Pew cartoon that followed. This subsequent development has robbed 'Odor-able Kitty' of any impact whatsoever and to modern viewers it just looks like a rather dull Pepe Le Pew short with a weird surprise ending. As a child, I hated Pepe Le Pew. As an adult, able to appreciate his more sophisticated, verbal and risqué humour, I love the character and most of his cartoons. 'Odor-able Kitty' makes me feel like a child again!

I've questioned the extent of the late, great, Mel Blanc's crazy character voices, and surely, this...well, I can't describe it--it's too incredible. Mel's voice for Pepe is reminiscent of Maurice Chevalier, for its boyish charm, or, to a lesser extent, Charles Boyer (though it SHOULD be noted that Pepe is only compared to Boyer because of personality, the unctuousness tone of voice, the heavily-lidded eyes, and the character name, Pepe Le Moko, from "Algiers"), which I think is a (if nothing else) perfect imitation.

God, I have too much free time. I'm gonna stop now, since I have nothing to comment on this cartoon--**SPOILER**--except my favorite part was the ending where Pepe is actually a skunk named Henry with a horrible mid-Western(?) accent, a p***ed-off wife, and two smiling kids looking on as their soon-to-be bachelor father gets beaten by his wife with an umbrella.

. . . Lookism, which elevates sight to the universal primary sense of the Animal Kingdom (due to Man's aversion to white canes), when any first year biology student has "smell" drummed into their skull as the correct answer. Starting with the first entry into this sordid skunk saga, the lumbering "lover" let's his eyes deceive him, mistaking a parade of improbable and mostly accidental white-striped stand-ins for another of his kind. The first rule of Biology is "The nose knows." Any skunk worth his salt would find out with one sniff if a cat, dog or hedgehog were masquerading as a fellow stink bomb, no matter how pale their stripe.