Cat's Eye
CAT'S EYEÂ (15)
D: Lewis Teague
Famous Films/Dino de Laurentiis (Martha
Schumacher)
USA 🇺🇸 1985
93 mins
Â
Horror
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W: Stephen King [based on short stories from his
'Night Shift' collection]
DP: Jack Cardiff
Ed: Scott Conrad
Mus: Alan Silvestri
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Drew Barrymore (Amanda), James Woods (Dick Morrison),
Candy Clark (Sally Ann), Alan King (Dr. Vinny Donatti), Kenneth McMillan (Cressner), Robert Hays (Johnny Norris), James Naughton (Hugh)
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With a screenplay adapted by horror maestro Stephen
King, it's difficult to tell if this is a horror movie for cat enthusiasts or a black comedy.
It doesn't really work on either level and comes up as
a half-arsed attempt to recreate the television show, The Twilight Zone.
Three semi-horror stories are interlinked by a cat
(kind of) but only the third and final of the trilogy is particularly memorable, starring a young Drew Barrymore who is visited at night by a troll hiding in her bedroom wall and the cat
attempts to stop it from stealing the child's breath. The first two stories are hampered by terrible dialogue ("Oh look! A cat.") and rather shoddy acting (aside from James Woods in the
opening segment about a non-smoking organisation's radical attempts to get their members to quit).
The cat brings no real significance to the first two
stories, only becoming integral to the plot in the last.
As a retro film, it's entertaining enough for it's 93
minute left, but it could have been marginally better if not for Alan Silvestri's ghastly electronic music score.
5/10
