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

"Swallow the Leader" is a fairly unique Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Bob McKimson. The popular song "When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano" can be heard throughout this short, and the screenwriter - Warren Foster - decided to make a joke out of it. It so happens that every year the beautiful blue swallows fly back to California, taking up residence at the Mission of San Juan Capistrano, where a hungry bow-tied cat awaits them. As cute as these swallows are, they are way too clever to get themselves devoured by the cunning feline.Highlights: The cat mistakenly eats a magnetic bird, after which a horseshoe magnet gets the better of him as he travels - rear end first - up some stairs, through a birdbath, up a ladder, across a rooftop with Spanish tiles, and, eventually, onto a seesaw, where a swallow drops some heavy boulders, causing the cat to repeatedly soar in the air and whack a bell with his head. After the cat finally traps a swallow onto some flypaper, he suddenly gets attacked by hordes and hordes of other swallows acting as fighter jets, complete with an arsenal of tacks and light bulbs.The plot of "Swallow the Leader" might be somewhat off-kilter, but it is still a fun cartoon to watch. Although he is not exactly the more famous slobbering cat Sylvester, the cat in this particular cartoon might just as well be, not only because he physically resembles Sylvester but also because he's a hapless fall guy, failing in every attempt to capture even one juicy little swallow.

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.

This short is reasonably entertaining and the cat in this one (if I'm not mistaken) is the same one featured in Early To Bet. He needs a good medical plan or he needs to retire, because he's singularly unlucky. Because I want to discuss some of the details, this is a spoiler warning: You have a situation which you think would be ideal for a cat-the swallows are returning to San Juan Capistrano-Meals on Wings, as it were. But even with the assistance of radar, this cat hasn't got a prayer-one bird beats him at almost every turn. Instead of dining on a swallow, this poor soul gets a jack-in-the-box and a painted metal figurine, with disastrous and painful consequences (for the cat-for the bird and the audience, it's hysterical).Even when he finally manages to trap the swallow on a piece of flypaper, he still can't catch a break, because then all the other swallows show up to save the first one and bomb the cat with light bulbs and tacks before they pick him up and carry him up to drop him from on high. So he turns to drinking instead.This short is available on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Volume 4 and is well worth watching. It and the Collection are recommended.