23 October 2017

Review: Cat’s Eye

Blu-ray & DVD: Cat’s Eye (1985)

Three ‘horror’ stories are intertwined by some crafty Stephen King winks. A man tries to give up smoking, a hood boss punishes his wife’s lover and a clever cat saves a little girl from a breath stealing monster.

Cat’s Eye is directed by Lewis Teague and written by Stephen King, featuring two adaptations of his short stories from King’s Night Shift collection (‘Quitters’ and ‘The Ledge’) while ‘General’ was written for the film and stars the cat (General) who is the connective glue between all three films.

The first story ‘Quitters’ features a very edgy James Woods as smoker Dick Morrison who is told by the company that the clinic has a 98% success rate due to a uniquely persuasive method; every time Dick smokes a cigarette, his wife and child will suffer. At first he scoffs, but on being caught having a sneaky fag he has to watch his wife be put into a cage and electrocuted. Which is both quite horrifying as her hair is standing on end and she’s leaping about, but also darkly funny, because you can see on Woods face, that he will very likely transgress once more.

In ‘The Ledge’, tennis pro Johnny Norris (Robert Hays) makes plans to run away with mob boss Cressner’s (Kenneth McMillan) wife. Cressner is a gambler and on luring Norris to his house proceeds to make a bet with him; walk the ledge around his high rise flat and win the wife, or fall and die. Cressner tries to make him fall by startling him with a horn and turning on a fire hose at the halfway point to keep Norris from lingering. A pigeon lands beside Norris and pecks at his foot, to the point of causing it to bleed. Despite these distractions, Norris manages to get back into the apartment and win the bet. Trouble is, you should never trust Cressner.

The cat now takes us to the story’s end and we see that this cat is special; he’s a monster hunter. He’s found by Amanda (Drew Barrymore…who is present in all 3 stories, so watch out for her) who names him General. Amanda’s mum (Candy Clark) doesn’t like the cat and believes he will kill the girls parrot. In fact the cat tries to protect Amanda from a small, malevolent troll that he witnessed taking up residence in the house. When Amanda sleeps, the troll emerges via a retractable hole in one of the walls in Amanda’s room and steals her breath. Will General succeed in saving Amanda from the Troll?

This is a proper old school 80’s fun horror, that isn’t so much horror than comedy-horror. Its great to see it looking so pristine on Blu-ray too!

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