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Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats is a 1988 animated television movie, and is part of the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 series, but is also essentially an extended remake of the original series episode "The Missing Heir".

Summary[]

Top Cat and the gang are pretending to be Alley Scouts, out doing good deeds in the hopes of getting rewards. T.C. blows a man's hat off so he can return it, but is stunned when the man is not impressed. Brain heads out to wash windshields. Benny saves the life of a homeless lady. She asks him to sign her memory book so she'll remember him as a hero. Her chauffeur arrives in her limousine and she gets in and takes off her disguise. She is actually a rich woman named Gertrude Vandergelt, who plans to leave her fortune to her missing niece, a 16-year-old teenager named Amy, who is stuck living a life of servitude at a car wash.

Officer Dibble brings Brain back to Hoagy's Alley and asks who gave him the bag of dirt that's now all over his windshield. Just when Dibble is about to arrest the gang, he gets a call saying that his application for retirement has been approved. Since it's now his last day, he drops the charges.

Running a gypsy fortune-teller shop in Dibble's absence, Top Cat and Benny receive news from lawyer Sid Buckman that Gertrude Vandergelt has died, and that she has named Benny in her will. T.C. and the rest of the gang accompany Benny to the Vandergelt mansion, where Dibble is now working as a security guard. At the mansion, they meet the conniving butler Snerdly, and his wolfhound Ratsputin. Sid Buckman reads the will, which states that since the true heir to the fortune, Amy, is nowhere to be found, Benny inherits her fortune, provided that nothing bad happens to him within the next two days, in which case it would go to Snerdly. Snerdly and Ratsputin plot to kill Benny, and advise T.C. and the gang to move into the Vandergelt mansion. Benny doesn't feel he deserves the fortune, and wishes he could find Amy so she can have it.

After several failed murder attempts, T.C. and the gang suspect someone wants Benny dead. Snerdly, who is keeping Amy at the car wash, realizes that to get to Benny, he'll have to get rid of the protective Top Cat. He calls a femme fatale cat named Kitty Glitter and tells her that he has arranged a date with a handsome rich cat. Kitty is so eager to have a rich cat for a husband that she puts on a wedding dress for the date, but, just as this plan is foiled, fails when she mistakes Brain for Top Cat. It's only when Snerdly calls her again, demanding to know where she is, that she realizes she's made a mistake.

That night, Snerdly throws a costume party. He gives Benny a bulldog mask and then calls the local dogcatcher to say that there's a mutt roaming around the Vandergelt estate. The dogcatcher arrives and captures Benny. It doesn't take long for T.C. and the rest of the gang to realize that Benny is missing, so they go looking for him. Thanks to a tip from Dibble, T.C. finds out that Benny has been taken to the pound, so they take the limousine there and break him out. The dogcatcher takes off after them in hot pursuit.

While on the run from the dogcatcher, T.C. and the gang hide in the car wash and recognize Amy from a portrait hanging in the mansion. They bring her back to the mansion, but arrive too late, as it is now midnight, and when Snerdly has just inherited the Vandergelt fortune, Sid Buckman then reveals that "he" is in fact Gertrude Vandergelt. She faked her death as part of a scheme to unmask Snerdly's crookedness. Snerdly disguises himself with the bulldog mask, and he and Ratsputin are caught by the dogcatcher.

T.C. and the gang return to their old lifestyle in Hoagy's Alley, and Dibble rejoins the police force. Kitty Glitter comes to the alley, still wanting to marry Top Cat, but fails when she dumps him when Brain lets it slip that they're broke. Amy comes to have a picnic with the gang.

Trivia[]

  • It is not explained why the cats and Dibble now live in southern California instead of New York City.
  • At the beginning of the film, Benny is seen riding on the side of a limousine with the camera angled so that it looks like he's inside until the limo turns a corner. This is a direct reference to the original series' intro sequence, which had T.C. doing the same thing. The gag itself actually originated in the Donald Duck short "The Autograph Hound".
  • The Flintstones (Fred and Wilma) and the Rubbles (Barney and Betty) can be seen living on Megabucks Drive as the tour bus drives by.

DVD release[]

On 9 August 2011, Warner Archive released Top Cat and the Beverly Hills Cats on DVD in region 1 as part of their Hanna–Barbera Classics Collection. This is a Manufacture-on-Demand (MOD) release, available exclusively through Warner's online store and Amazon.com[1]

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. Template:Cite web
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