Inferno (1980)

Produzioni Intersound
Starring: Leigh McCloskey, Irene Miracle
Directed by: Dario Argento

This review contains severe Kitty Carnage Warnings!

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

Synopsis: The second entry in Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy. Rose Elliott (Irene Miracle) suspects evil happening in and around the New York building where she lives and she calls on her brother Mark (Leigh McCloskey) to travel from Rome to help her. But is he too late?

Cat Cattle Call: There are numerous cats in the film, many of which are hanging out around the antique bookstore and curio shop next to the building in New York run by Kazanian (Sacha Pitoëff). The cats are in the alley outside the store as Rose seeks to find an entry to her building’s cellar. One of the cats even approaches her but turns away when she opens the cellar door. Food seems to have been used as an incentive to keep the cats on their marks.

Later in Rome we see Mark attending a college music appreciation class, but he is distracted by a ravishing woman holding a cream colored Persian cat. She seems to be casting a spell upon him. At the very least, she distracts him from reading the letter he has received from his sister.

Mark looks for the woman when the class ends but she is walking away.

Mark arrives in New York and meets his sister’s upstairs neighbor, Countess Elise De Longvalle Adler (Daria Nicolodi). They try to figure out the mystery behind Rose’s disappearance. In the interim, cats are seen around the building, often eating meat which is being fed to them. The origin of the meat, well, you will just have to guess!

In Kazanian’s store, a black cat is accidentally grabbed as the man stumbles. The cat then knocks over a statue, breaking it. The alley cats are still hanging around outside, too.

In one scene Elise is wandering around the building alone when she is suddenly attacked by numerous cats. As in most cat attack scenes, the poor cat actors are actually just thrown at the actress; catapulted at her, if you will. An extraordinary amount of cat fur is flying in these scenes.

If you look closely, you can see the actress who plays Elise is replaced by a stunt double wearing a kind of mannequin head to avoid being accidentally clawed on the face and head by the cats. This is used for most of the scene.

You can also actually see the arm of the person throwing one of the cats into the scene! The bad thing is that some of the cats seem to be fighting each other in the confusion. In any case, they are certainly fighting each other more than they are attacking the person.

Later, Kazanian approaches a sweet-looking tuxedo cat which is sitting beneath a table in his store.

Kitty Carnage Warning! This is where things turn ugly for the cats. Kazanian coaxes the tuxedo cat out only to grab it by the scruff. The poor cat actor is struggling as the man carries him across the room. The man then slams the cat’s head against the back of a chair. Fortunately the cat used for the head slamming shot is a fake one, but it is a disturbing moment.

Kazanian then takes things to extremes when he opens a sack full of live cats and throws the tuxedo cat inside. He then proceeds to take the sack down to the water and drowns the cats. He does get his comeuppance, but not until after the cats are drowned. A mechanism was used inside the closed bag to make it look as if it were full of cats.

Near the end of the movie, Mark is digging under the floor of Rose’s room when a tuxedo cat appears and then runs in, ducking down under the floorboards.

This same tuxedo cat is later seen attacking and eating a live mouse.

It is reported that assistant director Lamberto Bava wrangled so many cats for the film that he can no longer stand to be in a room with a cat and has avoided them ever since.