Satan's Waitin'
Encyclopedia
Satan's Waitin' is a 1953
animated Warner Bros.
Looney Tunes
(reissued as a Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies
) cartoon directed by Friz Freleng
, released in 1954, starring Sylvester
and Tweety
.
) one (since the one going "up" (to Heaven
) is roped off) and ends up in Hell. A Satanic bulldog (Hector the Bulldog) welcomes a terrified Sylvester. He realizes that he must goad Sylvester into giving up his remaining eight lives, so he asks #1 to sit on a bench to wait for the others.
Sylvester wakes up and Tweety tells him he's in trouble for breaking the sidewalk (which cracked upon impact of his earlier fall). Sylvester has had enough and tells Tweety he doesn't even know what "trouble" is and orders him to get lost. The bulldog's spirit reminds him that he has eight lives left, so Sylvester starts the chase up again. He chases Tweety around a moving steamroller
but gets flattened, sending life #2 through the street and into Hades. The flat #2 gets up and sits beside #1.
The chase then continues through an amusement park. They both run into a dog's mouth entranceway to the fun house, but Sylvester steps back out, takes one look at the dog and is literally "frightened to death". As scared-white-as-a-sheet life #3 takes his place on the waiting bench, the cat recovers and finds Tweety amongst the moving targets in a shooting gallery. He climbs into the targets to get at his prey but is shot several times in rapid succession. With each shot, lives 4 through 7 pop up on the bench. Sylvester bursts out of the gallery (after narrowly missing another shot) and sees Tweety heading towards the roller coaster. As Tweety sits in the front seat, proclaiming "that puddy tat will never find me here", the cat takes the seat directly behind him. The train ascends the lift hill and proceeds to go through the drops and turns. Near the end of the ride on straight track, Sylvester stands up. Just as he's about to pummel an unsuspecting Tweety, Sylvester slams into the entranceway of a tunnel. Upon impact, the train carrying life #8 in the front seat runs through the tunnel and down Hades' twisted conveyor route that took Sylvester's first life down earlier.
Recovering, Sylvester realized that he only has one life left. The bulldog again goads him to go after Tweety, but Sylvester screams "No, no, no! I don't want him! I don't want him!" and runs off. He decides to move into a bank vault with several cans of food, commenting that he'll be safe in there and nothing will happen to him. Later that night, two bank robbers try to break into the safe, but fail when they use too much nitroglycerine and end up killing themselves and Sylvester. As the three of them go down the escalator conveyor to Hades, one of the robbers tells the other, "Yer used too much, Mugsy." The disgruntled #9 adds: "Now he tells him!"
1954 in film
The year 1954 in film involved some significant events and memorable ones.-Events:*May 12 - The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx divorces wife Marion Benda...
animated Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
(reissued as a Blue Ribbon Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
) cartoon directed by Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
, released in 1954, starring Sylvester
Sylvester (Looney Tunes)
Sylvester J. Pussycat, Sr., Sylvester the Cat or simply Sylvester, is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic Tuxedo cat in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies repertory, often chasing Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, or Hippety Hopper...
and Tweety
Tweety
Tweety Bird is a fictional Yellow Canary in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons. The name "Tweety" is a play on words, as it originally meant "sweetie", along with "tweet" being a typical English onomatopoeia for the sounds of birds...
.
Synopsis
Sylvester is in pursuit of Tweety, chasing him to the top of a building. Sylvester falls from the building (first he grabs some of Tweety's feather to help him fly, but Tweety takes them back), crashes on to the sidewalk (which cracks) and dies. The spirit of his first life approaches two escalators and takes the "down" (to HellHell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
) one (since the one going "up" (to Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
) is roped off) and ends up in Hell. A Satanic bulldog (Hector the Bulldog) welcomes a terrified Sylvester. He realizes that he must goad Sylvester into giving up his remaining eight lives, so he asks #1 to sit on a bench to wait for the others.
Sylvester wakes up and Tweety tells him he's in trouble for breaking the sidewalk (which cracked upon impact of his earlier fall). Sylvester has had enough and tells Tweety he doesn't even know what "trouble" is and orders him to get lost. The bulldog's spirit reminds him that he has eight lives left, so Sylvester starts the chase up again. He chases Tweety around a moving steamroller
Steamroller
A steamroller is a form of road roller – a type of heavy construction machinery used for levelling surfaces, such as roads or airfields – that is powered by a steam engine...
but gets flattened, sending life #2 through the street and into Hades. The flat #2 gets up and sits beside #1.
The chase then continues through an amusement park. They both run into a dog's mouth entranceway to the fun house, but Sylvester steps back out, takes one look at the dog and is literally "frightened to death". As scared-white-as-a-sheet life #3 takes his place on the waiting bench, the cat recovers and finds Tweety amongst the moving targets in a shooting gallery. He climbs into the targets to get at his prey but is shot several times in rapid succession. With each shot, lives 4 through 7 pop up on the bench. Sylvester bursts out of the gallery (after narrowly missing another shot) and sees Tweety heading towards the roller coaster. As Tweety sits in the front seat, proclaiming "that puddy tat will never find me here", the cat takes the seat directly behind him. The train ascends the lift hill and proceeds to go through the drops and turns. Near the end of the ride on straight track, Sylvester stands up. Just as he's about to pummel an unsuspecting Tweety, Sylvester slams into the entranceway of a tunnel. Upon impact, the train carrying life #8 in the front seat runs through the tunnel and down Hades' twisted conveyor route that took Sylvester's first life down earlier.
Recovering, Sylvester realized that he only has one life left. The bulldog again goads him to go after Tweety, but Sylvester screams "No, no, no! I don't want him! I don't want him!" and runs off. He decides to move into a bank vault with several cans of food, commenting that he'll be safe in there and nothing will happen to him. Later that night, two bank robbers try to break into the safe, but fail when they use too much nitroglycerine and end up killing themselves and Sylvester. As the three of them go down the escalator conveyor to Hades, one of the robbers tells the other, "Yer used too much, Mugsy." The disgruntled #9 adds: "Now he tells him!"
Blooper
- In the scene where Sylvester loses four lives in the shooting gallery, he is actually shot five times. Somehow, the first shot does not cost him a life. After the second shot, the scene cuts over to the waiting bench. Life #4 is there as a result of that second shot, then #5, #6, and #7 appear alongside one another.
Censorship
- The CBSCBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
version of this cartoon ends after the devil dog urges Sylvester to go after Tweety despite that Sylvester has one life left to remove the last scene at the bank where Sylvester locks himself in a vault with food to keep himself from getting harmed any further, only to die in an explosion late at night caused by two bumbling bank robbers who overuse nitroglycerin to crack the vault door open. Also cut on CBS was how Sylvester's eighth life was lost: Sylvester stands up on the roller coaster car as he chases Tweety, only to smack face-first into the tunnel entrance. Sylvester was shown speeding towards the tunnel, but there was an abrupt cut at this point to Sylvester's eighth life riding a rollercoaster car into Hell.