Like a post-watershed version of Tom and Jerry, The Itchy and Scratchy Show takes cartoon violence to an absurd - and hilarious - new level. You'd think that, after almost a hundred episodes, an anthropomorphic blue mouse would eventually lose his bloodlust but yet, as the show makes it resoundingly clear, there's more than one way to skin a cat. And so we have such wildly inventive storylines as Itchy tying Scratchy's tongue in a knot around the moon, Itchy serving Scratchy his own stomach at a restaurant and, taking the fun out of it entirely, Itchy inventing a killing machine to bump off an endless conveyor belt of Scratchy clones. As well as boasting some superb wordplay ( 'Why Do Fools Fall in Lava?', 'Foster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!'), the show also has the uncanny ability to mirror whatever is going on in the Simpsons' lives. As a result, it probably wasn't a good idea for Homer to watch the episode 'Scar Trek: The Next Laceration' before he was shot off into space...
Yorkshireman (hence the surname). Often spotted sacrificing sleep and sanity for the annual Leeds International Film Festival. For a sample of (fairly) recent film reviews, please visit whatsnottoblog.wordpress.com.
