Cats Don't Dance
“Exciting, arousing, mysterious, vulgar...And I loved every moment of it, it's the perfect fun movie for the whole family”
“This was the first cartoon that made me slit my own wrists. And when Bambi's mom got shot I tried to hang myself.”
“Every time I looked into Danny's eyes, I could feel him mentally trying to undress me”
“I found the acting very impressive. Especially Kane Hodder's performance as Max.”
Cats Don't Dance is a 1997 animated exploitation feature film directed by Russ Meyer; the only animated feature produced by the short-lived Twisted Pictures animation unit. It was distributed to theaters by Troma Pictures.
Plot[edit]
A young ambitious cat named Danny travels from his small hometown of Kokomo to Hollywood with a song in his heart, dancing moves in his feet, and the dream of becoming a movie star. When he gets there, he learns the hard way that Hollywood has no interest in singing and/or dancing animals, and that the only way he can land a role is by sleeping with child star Darla Dimple. Danny refuses and finds that the only way he can earn enough to eat is by selling drugs to Elmer Fudd with Pudge the Penguin and Silent Bob. Disillusioned, he eventually sleeps with Darla without telling his fellow animal performers; not even his new friend Sawyer.
After they become successful, Danny discovers that Sawyer slept with Hollywood producer LB Mammoth and starred in a short pornography film after being given drugged milk. Calling her a slut he runs away in tears. Crushed, Sawyer finds a new lover in B-Movie mega star, Bruce Campbell. When Danny finds out, he hires Itchy and Scratchy to kill Sawyer. They do so by dumping Toxic waste on her. But it missed and hit Scratchy. She returns to her home to find Danny in bed with foreign actress Fifi Le Fume and Darla Dimple. Sawyer drags them both to the premiere of their latest musical film and tears them apart in front of the audience.
But the horror isn't over yet: Fudd rushes into the theater, high on a drug that makes him think everyone is a rabbit. He promptly shoots every character in the film to bits except Danny and Sawyer before being crushed to death by an ACME Advil.
The film concludes with Danny and Sawyer survived their death and Danny decided to apologize to Sawyer about sleeping with child star Darla Dimple and she forgiven him. Sawyer runs into Danny's arms, and the two finally kiss. Sawyer marries Danny in a wedding where both humans and animals attend.
Main Characters[edit]
- Danny spent most of his life as a stray cat, living mostly on spaghetti meals he stole from Lady and the Tramp behind restaurants. After years of working as a drug dealer with his uncle Fritz the Cat he finally got enough money to the bus ticket to Hollywood. Danny was forced to take various low-paying jobs in the movie industry; his main income still came from dealing drugs. He spent ten years as the stunt double for Sylvester and Tom. Danny didn't enjoy these times very much, as was quoted as saying "Those big shot jerks claim they do their own stunts, but I took every single hit from anvils, mallets and safes for them. And what did I get for that? Two bucks a day and a slap on the back!" But this still wasn't enough; Danny ended up selling himself to a Carnival run by inbreed freaks and mustache grooming enthusiasts in order to pay his rent. This is where he met his future wife, Sawyer.
- Sawyer was the bastard daughter of Leatherface and Underground Comic porn star Penelope Pussycat. While traveling around Texas with fellow porn star Jessica Rabbit she had a run-in with the homicidal Sawyer family. Lucky for Penelope, they were a clan of cannibals and were satisfied with eating Jessica. Penelope married Leatherface and they had one daughter. Leatherface was given the honor of naming their daughter, and he dubbed her AHHHHOOOOAAAAAHHHHHRRRRGHHHH Sawyer. This was a little hard on the throat, so they just called her by her last name.
Sawyer decided to pursue a career as an singer and actress and left Texas for Hollywood. At first she couldn't find work and took to gambling and prostitution to get by. After winning a gambling match at the Carnival that Danny sold himself to, she won him as her slave. They were accidentally married after a drunken night in Duckburg.
- T.W. Turtle was most known for serving his time in the military for most of the time during World War One. There he met a fellow private, a Mr. Mark Dindal. They were stranded in a trench for a course of nineteen months over which they both became gay and fell in love. After the war, the two coupled up and decided to live on the road. As they took their road trip through the heartland of America, T.W. saw the movie Plan 9 from Outerspace. Inspired by what he saw as an amazing triumph in cinema history, he decided to pursue an acting career in Hollywood.
Production[edit]
Johnny Cash provided the talking and singing voice of Tillie the Hippo, while the body part was filled in by Oprah Winfrey. Oprah was said to be an ideal choice, due to the minimal makeup needed to make her look like how the character was intended. In addition Angus Scrimm actually was the one who played Cranston the goat, but is almost completely unrecognizable under the immense amount of prosthetics. The special effects for Elmer Fudd's shotgun massacre were done by Tom Savini. Molds of the heads of 64 characters were made for the head shot effects. For extra realism, they killed the entire cast and filled the molds with their insides.
The film got off to a rocky start. Quite often on the set, Danny and Sawyer would excuse themselves off of the set by stating that they needed some fresh air. In actuality, they went into the studio's bathrooms to snort catnip and drink milk heavily mixed with vodka. Pudge the Penguin is said to bore witness to these events, and has admitted to joining them as well.
More trouble occurred in post-production. A rumor started that an image of a naked woman appeared in the upper left hand corner for two minutes. It was actually TW Turtle in drag and appeared for two hours straight at the request of his lover, Mark Dindal.
No people were hurt during the making of this movie, only animals. Lots and lots of innocent little animals. Tilly and Woolie were known to eat actors alive for their lunches, claiming that they "taste like bacon."
Songs[edit]
- Sawyer's song "Tell Me Lies" was written by herself, and was actually a song about her dark and seedy past full of gambling, drugs, prostitution, adult film, vaudeville revival shows, professional platypus wrangling, and the theft of those little mints hotels sometimes leave on your pillow.
- If played backwards, the song "Nothing is Gonna Stop Us Now" reveals some interesting details. A mysterious sounding voice recounts the slaying of several young production assistants who had worked on the film. Towards the end of the message, a faint chanting can be heard: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"
- During her song; "I'm going incredibly insane", Darla Dimple's voice was removed by her own request and dubbed by Dolly Parton.
Remake[edit]
Cats Don't Dance has recently been remade for Japanese audiences in the form of an anime. Within the anime, all animal characters have been changed to humans with animalistic features. The script was also drastically changed, and randoms bits of dialogue left over from Dragon Ball Z were added in for creative purposes. In the scene where Max grabs Danny and asks him "how does the kitty cat go?" Danny points towards him and exclaims "IT'S OVER NINE THOOOOUUUUSAAAAND!"
Trivia[edit]
- If you look really closely in this movie, and really open your eyes, you can find Jesus. He's in the third row behind the zebras.
- Elymra from Tiny Toon Adventures was originally meant to play Darla, but was turned down cause she strangled the original actor for Danny to death.
- Chuck Norris was originally supposed to play Danny. But as soon as he opened his mouth and began to sing, the sound waves from his vocal chords completely destroyed the Hollywood set. The movie itself had to be filmed secretly in a green-screen studio far away from Norris' location.
- PW turtle's stunt double was Raphael of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
- The posters at the end are all of various sexploitation movies owned by Troma and Twisted Pictures.
- This film was Sawyer's big breakthrough. Previously, she was mostly know for obscure leather and bondage adult films.
- Preceding the feature in theaters was a newly produced short film featuring 5 minutes of Leonard Maltin crying.
- Grossing around US$2 million (US$666 million worldwide), it was a considerably large bomb, partially due to stiff competition from Bram Stoker's Duckula and Roger Rabbit VS Bugs Bunny
- The true identity of the Zodiac killer can be found within Danny's straw hat. The hat was sold a few years on ebay to a woman who was named Amanda Hugginkiss, who's unfortunate name has plagued her for her entire life. She recently changed her name and is currently living in Arizona, where she lives off of a website she runs that is determined to prove that the US moon landing videos were faked.
- A on line petition has been made for people who wants to prevent the film from ever be released on VHS, Laser disc, DVD or any other form of media. It currently has 9585674832941746238458 signatures.