English Title: The Cat
Golden Harvest Company
Starring: Gloria Yip, Waise Lee, Christine Ng
Directed by: Ngai Choi Lam

Synopsis: One of the strangest cat films since Hausu, this Hong Kong oddity is the most bizarre mix of science fiction, fantasy, action and cheesy monster genres you will ever see!  It’s the story of three mysterious people, a Princess (Gloria Yip), an elderly man named Errol (Siu-Ming Lau), a cat named General, plus a writer named Wei Si Li (Waise Lee) who becomes interested in finding out what they’re up to.  Oh, and an evil blob from space.

Cinema Cat: General, the black Persian the film is named for, is nothing short of incredible, although to be fair half of the time he is replaced with not-very-realistic stuffed cat dummies and puppets.  The highlight of the film has got to be the martial arts inspired smackdown fight between General and an enormous mastiff-type dog in a junkyard at night.  The use of the dummy animals in parts of the scene are nothing short of hilarious, but the inserted shots of both animals work well to bring it all together.

Kitty Carnage Warning: There is violence against the cat in this film, both in the aforementioned dog vs. cat smackdown scene and elsewhere.  And while it is clear that dummy cats are used for a majority of the worst stunts, there are still some moments in which it seems the real cat is put through some rough treatment.  In particular is a shot when the writer carries the supposedly unconscious cat to his car an drops it in the trunk.  This is the one place where it seems clear they are using a real cat, and it seems unnecessarily harsh when they had no lack of fake cats on the set.

Final Mewsings: Cats kick dogs butts, especially when they know karate.

[nggallery id=22]

Relevant Links: