The Strange and Happy (Nine) Lives of Eek the Cat

    Legend has it that all cats have nine lives. If that’s true then Eek the Cat of the Fox Children’s Network’s Eek!stravaganza is settling into a comfortable middle age. His first three lives were as real life pets of director Savage Steve Holland. Like their animated counterparts, these three Himalayans were prone to disaster. However, without the benefit of cartoon indestructibility, their adventures were decidedly more tragic.
The first cat was chasing a bird and fell out a window… on an upper floor of a hotel. The second was carried off by a hawk before Savage’s eyes (both of these incidents were portrayed with happier endings during the first season of Eek!)
    The final cat, who name really was Eek, drank antifreeze and fell asleep in his usual spot in the driveway. Unfortunately, due to his placid nature, his immobility went unnoticed by his owner until it was too late.
    By this time, Savage decided that perhaps he wasn’t cut out to be a cat owner. Rather than feel the pain of losing another pet prematurely, he decided to immortalize the ones he had in ink and paint. Thus, the cartoon Eek may get kicked, run over by a car, set on fire, etc., but he always gets up hale, hearty and even more relentlessly cheerful than before.
    With the help of his best friend and frequent cohort, Academy Award-winning animator Bill Kopp, Savage spent about a year and a half developing the show. Eventually the project ended up at the fledgling Fox Children’s Network. Ironically Eek’s fabled bad luck initially haunted the for real.
    In a 1993 interview, Holland recounted the story this way: "It sat there for two years, and we were knew what had happened. It apparently ended up at (Fox Kids President) Margaret Loesch’s Office and she said. ‘Yeah, let’s make this into a show,’ and the note got stuck on somebody’s desk. It had been there for a year and a half! Margaret thought that we were not going to deal with it. That we were psychos who didn’t want to make a cartoon. It was all a big mess… And now it’s okay."
    Actually, things turned out better than okay. The show premiered in September of 1992 as Eek! The Cat. While initially (and incorrectly) perceived by some as a Garfield and Friends clone, the show’s unique sensibility has made it a cult hit.
    For the uninitiated, Eek is actually sort of an "anti-Garfield." His personal motto is "It never hurts to help," despite a life that constantly proves the reverse. And even though his world is one of chaos and disaster, he may very well be the happiest character on television, secure in the knowledge that he makes a positive contribution to the world.
    If this sounds maudlin, fear not! In the capable hands of his creators (Kopp is no longer involved creatively, but still provides Eek’s trademark cheery voice.) Eek is anything but boring. Using more pop culture references than any show save Mystery Science Theater 3000, The show has all the craziness on e would expect from Holland, best known for writing and directing the live action features Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer.
    Much of the humor comes from the well-defined supporting cast of characters. The dysfunctional single parent family that own Eek includes two children, bossy Windy Elizabeth and her constantly complaining brother J.B. Mom, voiced by 50’s and 60’s sitcom icon Eleanor Donohue, is a particularly inspired creation. Like the mother character in Better Off Dead, her culinary skills are notoriously ghastly (a fact which escapes her family). The two loves of her life are cleaning and learning inane foreign phrases on Berlitz tapes. Donohue’s superb deadpan delivery gives an extra kick to already goofy lines like "The library is full of tar," or "Your hamsters do that funky dance."
    Eek’s nemesis is Sharky, the dog next door, whom Kopp describes as "part beagle and part shark." (He maintains that he once lived next door to a family with a real life "shark dog" who tormented the entire neighborhood.) Initially, Sharky’s main concern were eating, sleeping, and tormenting Eek, but he character has grown over the past few seasons.
    His joys in life are his dimensionally transcendental (larger on the inside than out) dog house and his romantic pursuit of Platinum, the star of the an American Gladiator-type television show. Most of the hostility between him and Eek occurs when the hapless feline upsets those hobbies. Or they sometimes clash because Sharky is jealous of Eek’s love affair with Sharky’s owner, a cat named Annabelle.
Annabelle is a sweet, demure (when she wants to be) Southern belle. While occasionally her generous physique is fodder for jokes, she is also portrayed as smart, witty, and (again, when she wants to be) courageous, if a little bit spoiled.
    Rounding out the supporting cast is Elmo the Elk, voiced by Savage Steve Holland himself. Originally a spoof of Evil Kneivel, the cowardly Elmo is now an Elk of many professions, ranging from Secret Service agent to talk show host. The one constant is that he’s never very good at nay of them.
    Originally, the shows were done in half-hour segments. The second season found the show broken into two episodes per week. With the introduction of the second segment with a completely new set of characters, the show became Eek! And the Terrible Thunderlizards.
The Thunderlizards are a trio of prehistoric criminals who are offered, Dirty Dozen-style a full pardon in exchange for a small favor- wiping out the human race! Not that this is a large task. AT this point in prehistory, the human race consists of two beings: Scooter, an inventor who is responsible for all the bad ideas handed down over the ages, and Bill, the long suffering victim of all of Scooter’s inventions. Eventually, a third is introduced in the form of Babs, a product of Jurassic bioengineering who develops a love/hate relationship with Bill.
    The Thunderlizards are not nearly as fearsome as their reputation. Leader "Doc" Tari is Competent enough, but he is saddled with sidekicks Day Z. Cutter (voiced by Bill Kopp), a none too bright paramilitary type and Bo "Diddly" Squat, a lovable doofus who really wants to do the right thing, but usually finds it far beyond his simple mind. Their boss, General Galapagos, watches the ensuing mayhem and laments, "We dinosaurs are doomed! I just know it!"
    From the time of their inception to the present, the Thunderlizards shorts have been through many changes. Initially, Bill and Scooter were named "Atom" and "Steve". They were to have an "owner" in the form of neighborhood dino-kid Huckleberry, who actually did appear in a few episodes before being quickly written out. Further conflict was added in the form of a race of fossilized T-Rexes, the Thugasaurs, whose plans for world domination are routinely thwarted by the Thunderlizards. Despite the fact that they are unable to exterminate the two unarmed, comparatively tiny humans, Doc and company usually easily defeat the heavily armed Thugasaurs.
    A proposed third weekly segment was to have starred The Squishy Bearz, the stars of Eek’s favorite show, The Squishy Bearz Rainbow of Enchanted Fun Minute. The plan was for the viewer to watch the one or two minute show, a deadly spoof of The Care Bears, with Eek every week. However, due to the time constraints of a half-hour show, it was dropped. The completed pilot made its way into an Eek episode where he finds himself drawn into the Squishy’s television universe.
    Soon after the second season’s shows began airing, Bill Kopp left the production end of the show to create and produce the wonderful but short-lived Snookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show for Disney. Although the likening of the loss tot he breakup of the Beatles, Savage bravely carried on alone. The two; however, are still the best of friends. Kopp jokes that he’ll never be completely free from "Savage Steve Holland Hell," while inevitably praising him in the same breath.
    In the fall of 1995, the show became known as Eek!stravaganza, which heralded the addition of yet another new sequence, the first collaboration between Savage Studios and Film Roman, Klutter. If the segments resemble a hybrid of Eek! and The Critic, that isn’t a coincidence. According to Holland, he inherited the entire staff of The Critic after its unfortunate demise, including the director, Brian Sheesley.
    The stories are supposedly the adventures of a pile of junk brought back to life by static electricity. Actually, the creature, Klutter, takes a backseat to the wonderfully realized little kids who own the junk that comprise him.
    Among the group is the strangely familiar Kopp, the spacey best pal of Klutter’s Owners, Wade and Ryan Heap. Since the real life Bill Kopp was too busy at Disney to work on Klutter as either animator or voice artist, Holland and co-producer David Silverman, formerly of The Simpsons, decided to ensure his participation in absentia by making him a character!
    Holland jokingly describes the decision this way: "When David Silverman, myself and any of our friends got together, we spend most of the our time talking about, laughing at, and drawing Bill Kopp behind his back. We spend so much time doing this that we figured that we might as well make ‘Kopp’ a cartoon character that highlights the real Bill Kopp’s motto for life, ‘Get those women and children out of the way! I have to live!’"
    Not surprisingly, whenever a script calls for something horrible to happen to one of the kids, it’s inevitably Kopp. Among the indignities he’s survived are being eaten by giant slugs, kidnapped by a mad scientist, turned into a pod person and being forced to surf in drag on Klutter’s back across the Heap’s front lawn. (On can hardly wait to see what will someday happen to a character named "Savage" in a future Bill Kopp cartoon!)
    The other standout character is bossy Vanna, the disdainful object of Kopp’s affection, who is perpetually exasperated when the rest of the gang ignore her usually sound ideas.
    At this writing, there are only eight episodes of Klutter. While the 1996-97 season will feature 12 new Eek! Cartoons, and 6 featuring the Thunderlizards, there are no plans for further Klutters. However, the existing episodes will be kept in rotation.
    Merchandising for Eek!stravaganza has been hard to come by for the past several years, but that seems to be changing for the better. Early items, including a beautiful plush Eek!, a Super Nintendo cartridge and a three-pack of comic books distributed exclusively through Wal-Mart, inexplicably did not do very well.
    There have been three regional fast food promotions. The first was a series of figurines available from Hardee’s in 1995 featuring figures of Eek, Annabelle and Sharky, and vehicles featuring each of the Thunderlizards. A second promotion in early ’96 from Weinerschnitzel featured curly straws, an inflatable Annabelle and a Thunderlizards Drum. Only a few months later, KFC began a promotion with action figures.
    The most exciting piece of Eek! merchandising to date is the upcoming CD-ROM comic book, which will include the episodes of Eeks Files and Eek Space Nine. But apparently, Savage Studios is expecting even more goodies in the future. (Come on, guys, lets see those nifty Eek slippers that Kopp wears on Klutter!)
    There are comparatively few changes planned for the upcoming season. Piggy and Crabby, a pair of English penguins introduced last season will be on hand for a number of appearances. And Eek! trademark, the use of high powered celebrity voices, will continue.
In the past, viewers have heard Kathy Ireland as a possessed "Precious Moments"-type statue named Huggy, Heather Locklear as Eek’s Possessive new neighbor, Phil Hartman as a cute homicidal bunny, and Buck Henry as a one-winged cupid, as well as Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny as their X-Files personas.
    The current season will see John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted and Singer "Weird Al" Yankovic in an episode called The Fug-Eek-Tive. Karate champ Cynthia Rothrock and Fabio lend their throats to another, and Twisted Sister alum Dee Snyder appears as "Dee Syndersaurus" in a Thunderlizards episode.
    Holland maintains that these familiar voices give the show a unique quality. While he speaks highly of everyone connected with the show, he has high praise for William Shatner, who guested as Santa on the 1993 Eek! prime time special, and last season played "Captain Berzerk" in Eek Space Nine. "Mr. Shatner has us all on the floor when he comes in to record because he really wants to make his character exceptional. He literally gets red in the face trying to give us the best character voice he can muster. It’s incredible to watch."
    Effective February of 1996, Eek!stravaganza left its long time Saturday morning home in favor of a weekday afternoon slot. Here’s hoping that the change boosts the show from beloved cult hit to the mainstream consciousness that it truly deserves.