Directed by: Ivan Passer

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Dr. Harry Wolper (Peter O’Toole) is an eccentric scientist who enlists the aid of a college assistant named Boris (Vincent Spano) to help him try to clone his late wife.

Cat Burglars (Scene Stealers): One of the reasons Boris agrees to work with Dr. Wolper is because of a fellow student named Barbara Spencer (Virginia Madsen). After Dr. Wolper tells him her name, Boris finds her moving into a place and offers to take her mini-fridge inside. He carries the appliance on his back up a very long flight of stairs. As he is about to reach the top, two cats, a white female named Penelope and an orange and white male named Ulysses come running at him and jump up on the fridge before jumping back down.

This is a pretty neat bit of action considering the cat actors had to be cued to run and jump up, although it would appear they are being thrown onto, or “catapulted” onto the fridge itself before jumping down again. Somehow Boris manages to hang onto the fridge until the dog Agamemnon runs down the stairs and bowls him over.

Later Barbara moves in with Boris and brings her cats and dog with her. Penelope is sitting in a basket outside the bedroom and Ulysses is in bed with Barbara.

We see Ulysses in bed with Barbara two more times. In the latter Barbara is sitting up in bed as Boris’ robot approaches. She doesn’t know the robot is going to give the bed a nasty electrical shock, something Boris programmed to make sure he got out of bed in the morning. Boris leaps onto the bed and pulls both Barbara and the cat to the ground just in time.

Incredibly neither the animal actors or trainers were credited on screen.

Final Mewsings: Cat actors this good deserve credit!

Many thanks to Mark Murton for reminding us of the cats in this film.

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