Directed by: Tim Burton

This review contains a severe Kitty Carnage Warning!

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Based on the live-action short film by Tim Burton. Victor Frankenstein (Charlie Tahan) is distraught when his beloved dog Sparky is killed and sets out to bring him back to life.

Cartoon Cats: One of Victor’s classmates is Weird Girl (voiced by Catherine O’Hara) who owns a white Persian cat named Mr. Whiskers. She approaches Victor after class and tells him that Mr. Whiskers had a dream about him the night before.

When Victor asks her how she knows the cat dreamed about him she produces a V-shaped hairy turd / furball thingy. She goes on to tell Victor how Mr. Whiskers has had dreams (and poops) about some of the other children where something happened to them afterwards, either good or bad. “If Mr. Whiskers dreams about you, it means something big is gonna to happen,” Weird Girl elaborates.

After Victor leaves, Weird Girl holds up Mr. Whiskers and says happily, “You’re going to dream about me, aren’t you, Kitty?”

Mr. Whiskers accompanies Weird Girl to the baseball game in which Victor hits a home run. Unfortunately Sparky chases the ball into the street and is hit by a car and killed.

When Victor goes to the cemetery to dig up Sparky there is a grave marker with a cat on it that reads, “Goodbye Kitty.”

A black cat also confronts Victor from a gravestone, hissing at him. (This cat looks very much like the black cat who appears in Tim Burton’s stop motion short film Vincent.)

After Victor brings Sparky back to life via electricity, he hides the reanimated pooch in his attic. Mr. Whiskers appears outside the window and Sparky chases after him.

The chase goes into the neighbor’s yard where Mr. Whiskers jumps onto a plastic flamingo. When the flamingo falls the animals make a shambles of the yard.

Mr. Whiskers manages to escape to the neighbor’s roof.

Later in the film, Victor’s classmates find out about Sparky being brought back to life. They sneak into Victor’s laboratory to find out how he did it.

The children revive their pets with disastrous results. Mr. Whiskers brings a dead bat to Weird Girl and she gets the idea to try the experiment herself.

Unfortunately after setting up a butterfly lightning rod and hooking it to the bat she doesn’t see that Mr. Whiskers has again picked up the deceased animal. Both Mr. Whiskers and the bat are zapped before an explosion occurs.

Weird Girl finds Mr. Whiskers charred and stunned.

The cat then goes through a bizarre transformation into a Vampire Cat creature which flaps wildly all around the room before taking off into the night.

Vampire Cat returns to snatch Persephone, the poodle pet of Victor’s neighbor, Shelly (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker). Shelly and Victor chase after them with Sparky leading the townsfolk behind (although the townsfolk only want to kill Sparky at that point).

They end up at the New Holland windmill where a battle between Sparky and Vampire Cat takes place.

Victor manages to save Shelly and Persephone and helps Sparky but is attacked himself.

Sparky rescues Victor from the burning windmill but is dragged back inside by Vampire Cat.

Severe Kitty Carnage Warning! Things look bleak for Sparky until a falling piece of lumber spears Vampire Cat, killing him.

Final Mewsings: Even Vampire Cats don’t deserve such gruesome deaths.

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