THE CAT CREATURE
US, 1973, 72 minutes, Colour.
Meredith Baxter, David Hedison, Gale Sondergaard, John Carradine, Stuart Whitman, Keye Luke.
Directed by Curtis Harrington.
The Cat Creature is an early American telemovie. However, it draws on the long tradition of mysterious cats in Hollywood films as well as the films of many cultures. In the 1940s there was the celebrated classic The Cat People and its sequel The Curse of the Cat People. There was also the 1940s horror film with Basil Rathbone, Bela Lugosi and one of the stars of this film, Gale Sondergaard, The Black Cat. There was also a remake by Paul Schraeder of Cat People.
Curtis Harrington directed a number of horror thrillers, especially for television, including another film about menacing cats, The Eye of the Cat, with Eleanor Parker.
This film is an updated variation on the theme – the investigation of the art collection of a rich man, an Egyptian amulet, a mummy, a thief, police investigations – and menacing cats.
1. How entertaining was this thriller?
2. What conventions of the horror film did it use? how well? The background of ancient Egypt? Modern atmosphere of superstition? Murder, the police? Did these ingredients blend well?
3. How atmospheric was the photography, the use of colour, city locations, menacing settings? Comment on the special effects, especially the cat and its hypnotising people, the violence and the girl as the cat?
4. What was the overall effect of this film? Fright, horror, superstition? How serious was the impact, how humorous?
5. How credible was the plot? The opening of the tomb, the removal of the necklace, the coincidences, the characters involved, their superstition, greed, murder? How conventional was the plot for a horror film?
6. Comment on the impact of the principal characters: the girl assistant in the shop who was murdered, her being fascinated by the cat and her suicide? The owner of the shop. her criminal background, her possessiveness of her assistants, her unwitting hiring of the cat woman, her greed for the necklace, her murder of the broker? The meaning of her death? Vengeance? The cat's murder of so many of the minor characters? The importance of the Egyptologist, his fascination for the cat woman, his reaction to the truth? The police inspector?
7. The impact of the opening, the inventory, the fascination with the jewellery, the mummy, the cat, the initial murder of the man taking the inventory? How well did the film build on this with its sense of menace and deaths?
8. How important was the confrontation between the hero and the cat woman? Her trying to persuade him to be immortal with her? Her vengeance and his warding it off by replacing the necklace?
9. How important were the themes of good and evil, superstition, immortality, the cat creature an the incarnation of evil?
