Eye of the Cat is a convoluted murder thriller in the same vein as Les Diaboliques and Games, where it is never quite clear who is plotting to do what to whom. In this case, scheming beautician Kassia Lancaster(Gayle Hunnicutt) convinces a young man, Wylie (Michael Sarrazin), to return home to his ailing Aunt Danny (Eleanor Parker) in order to get the dying woman to change her will. Once Aunt Danny has bequeathed her fortune to Wylie, the plan is to murder her, making it look like her illness has finally won. Of course, things are never that simple... Wylie's younger brother also shares the house, along with numerous cats, of which Wylie has a severe phobia.
Opening with a split-screen pre-credits sequence, Eye of the Cat oozes the late-'60s from the outset, the film featuring big hair, short skirts, open-top sports cars and wild dancing; the groovy style makes the film quite fun despite the fact that the supposedly unpredictable plot is actually fairly easy to guess. Director David Lowell Rich even throws in a crazy cat-fight between Kassia and Wylie's previous fling (played by Jennifer Leak), a tense sequence that has Hitchcock written all over it, as Aunt Danny struggles with her malfunctioning wheelchair while on a steep slope, and a suitably grim demise for Kassia courtesy of all those kitties. These individual highlights make Eye of the Cat worth a watch, even if the film as a whole is nothing spectacular.
N. B. There are apparently two versions of the film, the original theatrical cut and a tamer version for TV. I saw the theatrical cut.
Opening with a split-screen pre-credits sequence, Eye of the Cat oozes the late-'60s from the outset, the film featuring big hair, short skirts, open-top sports cars and wild dancing; the groovy style makes the film quite fun despite the fact that the supposedly unpredictable plot is actually fairly easy to guess. Director David Lowell Rich even throws in a crazy cat-fight between Kassia and Wylie's previous fling (played by Jennifer Leak), a tense sequence that has Hitchcock written all over it, as Aunt Danny struggles with her malfunctioning wheelchair while on a steep slope, and a suitably grim demise for Kassia courtesy of all those kitties. These individual highlights make Eye of the Cat worth a watch, even if the film as a whole is nothing spectacular.
N. B. There are apparently two versions of the film, the original theatrical cut and a tamer version for TV. I saw the theatrical cut.