TheLittleSongbird
Swallow the Leader- what a great title!- is a fabulous cartoon, and quite unique amongst the many WB/Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons seen, that deserves to be seen more. The animation is just gorgeous, it is beautifully drawn and the vibrant colours alone are a feast for the eyes. It is also interesting that the cat is drawn like a criss-cross of a slightly overweight Sylvester and Dr Seuss' Cat in the Hat. As with any great music scoring in the WB/Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoon the music merges perfectly with the action and is composed and orchestrated with lovely textures and tremendous energy. The use of Mendelssohn's Athalie Overture is good too. The humour is more visual gag than dialogue(the narration sets things up very nicely), but it is very cleverly engineered and hilarious stuff. It is also rather brutal to the extent that you do feel sorry for the cat. The characters drive the cartoon engagingly, and the voice work from Mel Blanc and Robert C Bruce is excellent. In conclusion, a fabulous if underrated cartoon that works on all levels. 10/10 Bethany Cox
phantom_tollbooth
Robert McKimson's 'Swallow the Leader' is a wonderful cartoon which achieves most of its appeal through some gorgeous brightly coloured layouts and a fresh setup. A hungry cat eagerly awaits the arrival of a flock of migrating swallows. What follows is essentially a spot-gag cartoon in the Road Runner tradition but it is so gorgeous to look at that even the most predictable of jokes is glorious to take in. The whole thing builds up to a fantastic finale in which the birds attack the cat en masse, which showcases McKimson at his best. From its clever double-pun title to its uplifting brightness, 'Swallow the Leader' is a joy to behold and while I am sure there are many who consider it a run-of-the-mill spot-gag cartoon, I have a special place in my heart for this lovely visual feast.
Lee Eisenberg
In basically any cartoon where a cat attempts to eat birds, it's pretty much a guarantee that the birds will give the cat hell. And Robert McKimson's "Swallow the Leader" gives the feline star (he looks like a slightly fatter version of Sylvester) some real hell! Awaiting the return of swallows to San Juan Capistrano, the head swallow makes mincemeat of him...so guess what the whole gang does! What I think would have been neat would have been if they'd set this cartoon in San Juan Bautista. You may recognize the latter as the place in Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo". I try to imagine the cat doing what Kim Novak's character does (though for the record, there isn't actually a bell tower in San Juan Bautista).But that's beside the point. Contrary to McKimson's detractors, he had some good ideas for cartoons. Like Friz Freleng, he just used material that he considered funny (Chuck Jones went for the intellectual stuff). Worth seeing.
ccthemovieman-1
Do the swallows still come back to the mission at San Juan Capistrano? I would presume. Anyway, that's the setup for this cartoon in which an unnamed cat awaits these birds' arrival on March 19th of each year.He has "no vacancy: and similar signs at every nest in sight with a trap set up in one available nest. Like Wile E. Coyote, however, you just know this cat is not going to eat that first of the beautiful birds and you know he is going to take some beatings attempting to do so. Man, does he ever take beatings, especially when it looks like the cat finally prevailed and the rest of the flock - thousands of them - gang up and dive-bomb this feline. It's pretty brutal stuff in some scenes, like the punishment poor Tom got in the Tom and Jerry cartoons, but it's entertaining.The cat looks a lot like Sylvester but slightly different, almost a Dr. Suess "cat in the hat" look to him.
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