English Title: The Night of a Thousand Cats
Avant Films S.A.
Starring: Hugo Stiglitz, Anjanette Comer
Directed by: René Cardona Jr.

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

Synopsis: A rich playboy (Hugo Stiglitz) picks up girls around Acapulco in his helicopter and whisks them away to his castle where he keeps two very bizarre collections.

Cat Cattle Call: You would think a movie with a title such as this one would appeal to cat lovers, but be warned, this is a very unfriendly movie towards cats and is chock full of Kitty Carnage Warnings! The overall plot is so insipid but needs some explanation. The playboy guy whose name is Hugo takes the women he picks up to his gothic castle in the middle of nowhere. Aided by his mute flunky named Dorgo (Gerardo Zepeda), he keeps one thousand cats in an enclosure. One thousand is a bit of an exaggeration, as there are probably closer to 300 cats in the enclosure. It’s still a lot of cats all thrown into one area together.

Shots of the cats are interspersed throughout the film.

Hugo kills the women and keeps their heads in crystal cases. Their bodies are chopped up and fed to the cats by Hugo and Dorgo. Hugo even partakes in some of the meat himself.

Kitty Carnage Warning!  But Hugo is far from being a cat lover and treats his cats with contempt and violence. The first woman we see visit the castle is served meat (the source of which is already questionable). She is then startled when a white cat leaps onto the table. Hugo is quick to grab the cat, not even by the scruff but by the skin on its back! Hugo picks up the cat this way and flings the poor animal around violently. He then carries the cat to the pen and unbelievable lobs the poor thing up and over the wire wall of the enclosure! The cat goes flying and lands on its feet amongst the other cats, but it looks like a hard fall either way.

Kitty Cameos:  Apart from the cat collection at the castle, two other cats make appearances in the film. One of the women owns a white cat which is seen sitting with her and Hugo in her apartment.

Kitty Carnage Warning!  Unfortunately this girl leaves and Hugo takes out his anger on the cat, dunking it into the pool to drown.

A black cat is the pet of the daughter of one of Hugo’s other potential victims.

At one point the black cat is seen licking at the head of the child’s doll. A foreshadowing of events to come?

Eventually the cats escape the pen and attack Hugo violently, and even turn on the woman he was trying to kill. During these scenes the cats are thrown all over the place. Some are thrown onto a flat clear glass and shot from beneath to give the impression they are attacking. Of course, as is usually the case in these kind of movies, the cats don’t appear to be attacking anyone. The girl escapes and Hugo is last seen being devoured by the cats.

Faux Cats:  Two stuffed cats are so awful that they must be mentioned. One of Hugo’s ancestors was apparently a taxidermist, but by the look of these cats he wasn’t a very good one.

Final Mewsings: All of the cats in this movie probably wish they could have been replaced with stuffed doubles!

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