by Linda Kay

Directed by: Gus Trikonis

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

Synopsis: Large corporation employee Frank Macklin (Robert Hays) is sent back to his small Iowa hometown to take over and reshape their beer bottling company into a larger brand which utilizes machinery to increase production, a change which does not sit well with many of the townsfolk.

Cat Burglar (Scene Stealer): Directly affected by the restructuring are Frank’s former best friends, Harry (David Keith) and Ray (Tim Thomerson). The pair protest the factory changes by skipping work one day, getting drunk while laying in a rotting bathtub in Ray’s junk-strewn yard. An extremely relaxed orange and white tabby cat is lying across Ray’s chest as the men sing. One website states the cat’s name is Bounty but we can’t find any confirmation of this.

Frank arrives and tries to reason with his friends but they are too drunk and frustrated by his perceived betrayal to listen.

The cat remains on Ray’s chest throughout the scene which leads one to question whether or not the cat actor night have been drugged or if this just happened to be one of the most mellow cats ever. The cat seriously does not react to anything going on, not even when Harry breaks a beer bottle on his head or when Ray opens a bottle by smashing the top on a nearby water heater and drinks from the jagged glass, cutting his lip and using the cat’s paw to wipe away the blood (this last bit was singled out as being notable by newspaper reviews of the day as being something movie goers had certainly never seen before). Likewise the cat is heard mewing a few times at the start of the scene but this appears to be dubbed over.

When Ray eventually grabs the cat by the scruff and sets him or her down on the ground, we see the kitty wandering around nearby as Ray and Harry walk away, but the cat just meanders around the spot, seemingly a bit spacey. We certainly cannot say for sure the cat was given a sedative since it seems like a strange action to take for such a short scene in which the cat may or may not have even been scripted to appear.

Final Mewsings: Cats clearly can’t hold their beer.

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