A trio of stories with a vague connection to cats. The first story concerns a guy trying to quit smoking (James Woods) who has joined an anti-smoking organisation who use goombah-style strongarm tactics to keep you on the straight and narrow. Alan King plays the creepy, deadly serious head of the organisation. In the second outing, Kenneth McMillan plays a viciously vindictive rich guy seeking revenge on handsome Robert Hays for having an affair with his wife. He makes Hays an offer: Walk around the entire apartment building ledge, and he can have his wife. Being an a-hole, he makes this even more difficult and dangerous than it already sounds. Mike Starr and Charles S. Dutton (with hair!) play McMillan’s thugs. The third story features a young girl (Drew Barrymore) whose new kitty keeps getting blamed for all kinds of mischief by her cold-hearted mother (Candy Clark), mischief actually caused by a creepy little goblin-like creature. James Naughton plays Barrymore’s more level-headed father.
Horror anthologies can be pretty uneven and often disappointing, but this 1985 Stephen King (“Carrie”, “The Dead Zone”, “Misery”) adaptation from director Lewis Teague (Yes, director of King’s underrated “Cujo”) is one of the better ones. Admittedly the scariest thing in the film is the credit ‘Dino De Laurentiis Presents Stephen King’s…’, but not all horror films have to be scary, per-se. The film has an absolutely brilliant opening where a slobbering St. Bernard chases a cute tabby cat before the cat gets away. No doubt Mr. Teague and Mr. King thought that was an hilarious in-joke.
The first story is bleak and darkly amusing with James Woods a nicotine addict in the waiting room for an anti-smoking treatment…with huge cigarette advertisements all over the place. On a good day, James Woods can be one of the most dynamic and intelligent actors around. On a bad day, he gets Oscar-nominated for playing a racist Foghorn Leghorn. He’s well-cast and in solid form here. Alan King is surprisingly effective, both creepy and intimidating as an anti-smoking guy who comes off more like a mob boss. Look out for a young James Rebhorn in this segment as a party guest. Boy does he look…middle-aged.
The second story has the excellent and sorely missed Kenneth McMillan, but unfortunately also stars the bland and barely mediocre Robert Hays (who is well-cast, but uninspiring). It has some seriously malicious humour, particularly towards cats. The mean-spirited treatment of cats, throughout the film however, is a helluva lot more palatable here than it was in King’s awful “Sleepwalkers”, where it was just foul. It’s deliciously nasty, and at times undeniably tense and nervous stuff.
The final story brings Drew Barrymore to the fore, having made brief appearances throughout the film, and is an OK juvenile horror story. It’s a bit like “The Gate” or the more recent “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark”. It’s probably the weakest of the three stories, but not by a huge margin and is still kinda creepy and weird.
I have to say that the actual connection to a cat’s eye, is somewhat lost on me. Was the title meant to suggest that the cat is a narrator? Because, otherwise, cats play a very minor part in the stories, and even if that is the meaning, it’s pretty stupid. Scripted by King himself, it’s still very anti-cat (aside from the final story perhaps), but is nonetheless darkly humorous fun, a little bit like King’s underrated “Thinner” in that sense.
I take major issue with the awful, overbearing Alan Silvestri (“Forrest Gump”, “Predator”, “The Quick and the Dead”) electronic score, but otherwise, I enjoyed it.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Some will find this unpleasant and bleak, but I found it interesting and more consistent than most anthologies. Worth digging up if you missed it on original release, especially if you’re a Stephen King nut.
