EDITOR’S NOTE: Eye of the Cat was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 22, 1973 at 11:30 p.m., Saturday, July 5, 1975 at 11:30 p.m and Saturday, June 18, 1977 at 11:30 p.m.
Written by Joseph Stefano (co-creator of The Outer Limits) and directed by David Lowell Rich (The Horror at 37,000 Feet), this feels like a giallo, but it was shot in San Francisco by an American director.
Danielle (Eleanor Parker) is a rich woman missing 75% of her lungs, which seems like the kind of thing that would kill you, but here we are, and she’s getting her hair done. When her hairdresser Kassia (Gayle Hunnicutt, The Legend of Hell House) notices just how badly she is breathing, she calls Danielle’s nephew Wylie (Michael Sarrazin) with a plan to shut off her oxygen and then collect the inheritance, but the catphobic Wylie screws that up, and an orange cat pays the price by getting electrocuted.
Danielle is being taken care of by Wylie’s brother Luke, but they’re both in it for the money, which was going to the cats before Luke uses a bowl of meat in a car and drives them off. Those cats are coming back, and they’re not pleased with the humans keeping them from their homes.
By the end of the movie, Luke, Wylie and Kassia are in a love-and-murder triangle, while the cats have grown mad with need after bowls of meat are hidden throughout the house and that electrocuted orange tabby rises like some ghostly avenger.
I mean, my cat tried to kill me for a piece of fried chicken last week, so I get it.
The TV version of this movie is way less intense, as there’s less ghost cat and his army of deadly mousers and just one cat and paranoia. This remix was made with a few new scenes and some outtakes edited together. It’s fine, but the theatrical ending has more cats going bonkers than nearly anything I’ve ever seen, to the point that I was in hysterics.
