The Shadow of the Cat

source: The Shadow of the Cat

This slow moving but suspenseful Gothic thriller is not your every day old dark house movie, but one where you know who the villains are, await with glee their ultimate demise, and laugh with glee at much of the irony of the story line. It is obvious that the family who kills their aging matriarch hates the very protective cat who witnesses the murder and seeks revenge. Attempts to get rid of the furious feline prove impossible as the cat escapes every time, only turning up to dispatch cleverly those she witnessed being responsible for her beloved mistresses death. When other family members show up, suspicions of foul play become evident as the deaths which occur suddenly do not seem under any manner to be caused by anything other than natural causes or possibly human foul play. Each of the bad guys reacts in complete fear from the approaching cat as if realizing that "This is it. I'm going to be dead in a minute or so.". Seemingly fragile, André Morell, as the widower of the wealthy murdered woman (Catherine Lacey), is very Boris Karloff like in nature, and he gives a riveting performance which shows a lack of any guilt over having his wife killed yet complete fear when he thinks about what the kitty knows. Freda Jackson is very Mrs. Danvers like as the ruthless housekeeper, and Andrew Crawford demonic as the butler who actually did the dirty deed in the first scene. Then there's the varying relatives, lead by Barbara Shelley as Lacey's favorite niece who appears to be the heir to her estate which had been the motive to the initial murder in the first place.Vanda Godsell is good as a rather suspiciously motivated female staff member. The dark, eerie photography and a chilling musical score are other plusses of this chiller which starts off with Lacey reciting Edgar Allan Poe and ends up with some plot twists that Mr. Poe himself would have been happy with.

Wealthy Ella Venable (Catherine Lacey) makes a new will leaving everything to her husband Walter (Andre Morell). Ella is clubbed to death by her servant, Andrew (Andrew Crawford), and helped by Walter and the housekeeper, Clara (Freda Jackson), he buries her body in a shallow grave in the woods. The chief witness to all this is Ella's pet cat, Tabatha, which embarks on spying on and terrorising them and they decide to trap and destroy it. After the cat jumps on Walter in the cellar weakening his heart and confining him to bed, Ella's niece, Elizabeth (Barbara Shelley), arrives at the house along with Walter's unscrupulous relatives; his brother Edgar (Richard Warner); his son Jacob (William Lucus) and his wife Louise (Vanda Godsell). Walter instructs Edgar, Jacob and Louise to find another will that exists leaving Ella's entire fortune to Elizabeth - whom they later plan to kill - and to trap and kill the cat. But, Tabatha outwits the plotters every time and one by one the cat exacts vengeance on those that killed its mistress. A Hammer horror in all but name - the company removed its name from the credits due to legal quota reasons - which supported The Curse Of The Werewolf on the double bill in 1961. It is masterfully directed by John Gilling who succeeds in wringing suspense and tension from a daft plot. There are some neat shocks - the death scenes shot from the cat's point of view using a distorted lens are particularly effective. Arthur Grant's atmospheric black and white camera-work with its use of shadow and Mikos Theodorakis' jumpy score add to the spooky old dark house setting leading up to a shocking climax. Performances are good all round with Warner, Lucus and Godsell suitably shifty and untrustworthy as the good for nothing, self serving relatives while Conrad Philips (William Tell) is standout as the newspaper man who suspects that the family are up to no good from the word go. Andre Morell is good as the villainous Walter Venable although it is far from his best Hammer performance. I personally prefer him as Dr Watson in The Hound Of The Baskervilles or, better still, Sir James Forbes in The Plague Of The Zombies while Barbara Shelley offers a strong performance as a typical Hammer heroine. If the film has any flaws it is that the giggles do occasionally set in when the actors go over the top in their hysterical reaction to the cat. The police inspector (Alan Wheatley) rather neatly sums it up: "Things really come to pass when a cat terrorises a house full of adults."

Reading an old issue of British film mag Empire,I noticed a review from Kim Newman which said that people could hold a Barbara Shelley "cat" double bill,thanks to (the very good) Cat Girl and this John Gilling-directed flick coming out on DVD. Introduced to Hammer Horror with Gilling's superb dream-logic Gothic tale The Plague of the Zombies,I started searching round for more info,and I was thrilled to find the whole film online!,which led to me following the black cat. The plot: Licking their lips for the contents of a new will her husband pushed her to sign, Ella Venable's decide to speed things up and kill her.As they bury the body in the garden,her butler Andrew,husband Walter and the maid Clara promise to keep the killing secret,with the only one who does not agree being Ella's loyal cat Tabitha. Whilst trying find Ella's original will (which left nothing to him) Walter invites niece Elizabeth "Beth" Venable round,as the police search for "missing" Ella. As Walter secretly looks for the original will,Beth notices the trio are terrified of a cat!,who soon steps out of the shadows with its murderous paws. View on the film: Quoting Edgar Allan Poe opening lines of The Raven,the screenplay by George Baxt creams this "unofficial" Hammer Horror with a tightly spun murder mystery shadowed with a peculiar Gothic Horror purr.Largely taking place in the Venable house,Baxt attacks each of the murdering residences with a macabre delight,as the deaths in the cats eyes allows Baxt to tangle the killers in deadly Rube Goldberg twists. Hissing at the cat and Beth for asking questions about Ella's whereabouts,Baxt unrolls a delicious murder mystery,filling the dark corners of the house with frightful whispers over fears of Beth unlocking their secrets. Despite the black and white presentation taking away his remarkable use of colours, director John Gilling impressively still digs his claws into a rich Hammer Horror Gothic atmosphere.Casting a sense of fearful unease bubbling underneath the false concern for Ella, Gilling and cinematographer Arthur Grant stylishly whip-pan across each killer and strikes the viewer with their sly smiles. Holding back on the gore,Gilling dives in to the ridiculousness of the situation with fantastic first person tracking shots which make the cat look like a 60 foot beast. Staying in bed over fears of the avenging kitty, André Morell gives a splendid performance as Walter,who acts as a warm family figure,whose image Morell tears down to reveal the money grabber with scratches of death on his hands. Joining fellow Hammer star Morell,the elegant Barbara Shelley gives a terrific performance as Beth,whose puzzlement over everyone's fear of the cat Shelly curls up with a quick-witted questioning side,as Walter goes after that darn cat.

"Shadow of the Cat" is a modest and often overlooked Hammer horror production, but simultaneously also an underrated and genuinely creepy gem that is guaranteed to deliver a compelling plot, a moody gothic atmosphere, competent performances from a bunch of Hammer regulars and more than a handful of silly but nevertheless sinister murders committed by (or at least initiated by) a vindictive cat named Tabitha! Moments after her beloved heiress Ella Venable read Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" to her, Tabitha the Cat witnesses how poor Ella gets murdered by her husband Walter and two household staff members. The faithful housecat promptly makes it clear that she will avenge her heiress and terrifies the culprits so badly that they must call in the help of more vicious family members. While six (!) people are desperately trying to annihilate the evasive cat, the good-hearted niece Beth begins to suspect that aunt Ella's disappearance and the sudden fear for the otherwise friendly animal might have something to do with a missing testament. Sure, it requires a large dose of "suspension of disbelief" to accept how unnaturally petrified these people are of a simple cat, but George Baxt's screenplay is clever and John Gilling's direction is professional enough for the film to remain suspenseful. Gilling made some of Britain's best and most nightmarish horror films, by the way, like "Plague of the Zombies" and "The Flesh and the Fiends".

Filmmakers have long faced a dilemma as to how to make benign domestic pets and unferocious animals look malevolent.Short sharp close ups and doom laden music ,mickey mousing are 2 ways of doing it.both are tried by the director,the redoubtable John Gilling.However even he cant make this feline look ferocious.Maybe he should have hired a Twetie Pie double.However this doesn't affect the entertainment to be had as a number of venerable actors make themselves go silly trying to look as if they are truly worried about the pesky canine.It is in fact the sort of film where you scream with laugh rather than fear.It is worth viewing if for no other reason.

No supernatural creatures in this Hammer film, but a lot of the human cast in The Shadow Of The Cat thinks Tabitha is the feline from hell. Not that they don't deserve what happens to them. The film opens with Andre Morrell murdering his wife who controls the family fortune and with the connivance of two servants Andrew Crawford and Freda Jackson. The only witness to the event was Tabitha the cat and the sight of the cat gives them guilty consciences. Other relatives arrive including Barbara Shelley and her fiancé Conrad Phillips and Shelley is the only one that Tabitha behaves with. The others now influenced by Morrell all hate the cat, ascribing all kinds of supernatural behavior. And attempts to trap and kill it result in a whole lot of the cast being eliminated. This is a good one from Hammer because it relies on the human failings for these people to fail. Tabitha has no powers, she's just smarter than the rest of the humans in the cast. Cat's got Pussynality.

The Shadow of the Cat is directed by John Gilling and written by George Baxt. It stars Conrad Phillips, Barbara Shelley, André Morell, Richard Warner, William Lucas and Andrew Crawford. Music is by Mikis Theodorakis and cinematography by Arthur Grant. Tabitha the house cat witnesses her mistress being murdered by her scheming family and sets about enacting revenge... Out of BHP Films, which is basically Hammer Films using an alias due to a technical legality, The Shadow of the Cat is a delightfully eerie entrant in the pantheon of Old Dark House movies. The picture kicks off with the brutal murder of an old dear, the setting a moody mansion full of shadows, murky rooms, rickety floors, nooks and crannies, and this while Tabitha the cat watches intensely. From here we meet the roll call of family and house servants, the majority of whom are nefarious, and as the paranoia builds amongst the guilty, their reasons for dastardly doings evident, Tabitha goes about her cunning assassinations. Of for sure it's bonkers in plotting, but Gilling (The Plague of the Zombies/The Reptile) was a very astute director, and he manages to wring much suspense and unease from the story, whilst he's not shy to play up some humour and even adds some decent shocks into the bargain. Cast are on good form, playing it just the way it should be played, and the Bray Studio surrounding areas once again prove to be a useful location for such horror shenanigans. Aided by Grant's (The Tomb of Ligeia/The Curse of the Werewolf) beautiful black and white photography, Gilling proves masterful at atmosphere. Naturally we have the requisite thunderstorm, but it's the oblique angles and looming shadows that really fill the mood with impending dread. While the use of a stretch screen technique to portray the cat's POV (Catovision?) is a nice trick that works very effectively. It's a hard film to get hold of, but there are decent sources available to view it (the Onyx Media International double DVD with Cat Girl is a good transfer that does justice to the photography). It's still under seen and little known due to its lack of availability. Which is a shame, because for fans of Old Dark House creepers there's good fun to be had here. 8/10

After spending a typical evening reading Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" to her cat, poor Ella Venable (Catherine Lacey) is brutally murdered. With the cat as the only witness to the deed, the three miscreants responsible believe they've committed the perrrfect crime. Not so fast! It seems that kitty has a few tricks up her fuzzy sleeves, resulting in mayhem for the three cantankerous coconspirators. Enter Ella's niece, Elizabeth (Barbara Shelley), who is so nice that she makes Pollyanna look like Mrs. Blaylock from THE OMEN! Also, a copper is under foot, snooping for clues. As more relatives of the odious variety arrive, it's not certain just who will survive Ella's furtive feline! THE SHADOW OF THE CAT is a highly entertaining ball of yarn. It's ghastly fun to watch the criminals reduced to jelly at the paws of the titular tabby! The POV, kitty-vision shots are particularly cool. Andre Morell, Freda Jackson, and Andrew Crawford are all wonderfully wicked in their roles. Highly recommended for lovers of horror with a sense of fun...

The premise is that a husband and two servants murder a wealthy woman and hide her body, but they fear the cat that saw it might "tell" someone what happened. Why would they be afraid a cat would reveal their guilt? Much of the time is spent trying to kill the cat. Why not let the cat surprise them and reveal the body location and their guilt without any suspicion from the guilty crooks? They could give the cat away or send it to a dog pound. A much more effective thriller like this was Eye of the Cat with Michael Serrazin and Elanor Parker. Film is well directed and acted, though.