Writer: Joseph Stefano
Composer: Lalo Schifrin
Starring: Michael Sarrazin, Gayle Hunnicutt, Eleanor Parker, Tim Henry, Laurence Naismith, Jennifer Leak, Linden Chiles, Mark Herron, Annabelle Garth
More info: IMDb
Tagline: Terror that takes you beyond any fear you've ever known!
Plot: A man and his girlfriend plan to rob the mansion of the man's eccentric but wealthy aunt. However, the aunt keeps dozens of cats in her home, and the man is deathly afraid of cats.
My rating: 6.5/10
Will I watch it again? Only when I come across a nice widescreen print.
This is one of those pictures you watch because the trailer is so unbelievable fun. Now the film can't sustain that level, of course, but the ending definitely pays off for fans of the trailer. The lead-up to the last fifteen minutes can drag a little but overall it's an entertaining picture with good performances. You get the idea that everyone involved was making a serious horror/thriller. The trailer doesn't project that but it's a pretty well made horror flick and this is coming from 1969! It's the kind of picture that was very prevalent in the mid to late 70s which makes it unusual just for that. There's a scene when Aunt Danny (Parker) looses control of her wheelchair on the steep streets of San Francisco. It's masterfully shot and it's intense and horrifying. The cats are the real star of the show and those little bastards are not to be fucked with. You can tell that some of them are being tossed around. Hopefully they didn't hurt any of them but they really scared the shit out of the actors. Sometimes you can tell their reactions are genuine and that helps sell the horror. I'm willing to bet that if I put a nice widescreen print up on the big screen, my score and enjoyment would go up. The more I talk about this one, the more I like it.
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