by Linda Kay

Original Title: La muerte llama a las 10

Also Known As: Death Calls at 10; The Warm Lips of the Killer

Directed by: Juan Bosch

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

Synopsis: Peggy Foster (Gillian Hills) worries about her boyfriend Michael, a photographer who was on assignment in Vietnam and has not returned. Needing money for rent, she sublets the upstairs portion of her apartment to a mysterious man which seems to be the catalyst for a series of increasingly troubling and life threatening incidents.

Cat Burglars (Scene Stealers): Everyone is weirded out by an upstairs neighbor named Mr. Lewis (Carlos Otero) who owns a Siamese cat named Bonzo. Lewis is standing in the shadows on the stairs when Peggy returns home one day.

When a man dies after falling from Peggy’s balcony, the police question everyone, including Mr. Lewis who is only too happy to tell them all about his music-loving cat.

At one point the feisty kitty hisses at the landlord, and Lewis makes it clear he is done with the questioning after accusing the landlord of kicking Bonzo.

Later in the film Peggy is nervously walking through her dark apartment when Bonzo suddenly leaps (or actually is catapulted) at her in a Spring Loaded Cat moment. Bonzo quickly runs out onto the balcony.

Peggy follows and is shocked to find Mr. Lewis dangling from the balcony. He clambors his way back up and apologizes, explaining that it was Bonzo’s being unpredictable and moody which caused him to somehow end up dangling off her lanai.

Bonzo mews and is picked up by Lewis who apologizes and insists that Bonzo is sorry as well. It’s clear Peggy hasn’t forgiven them, especially when she reaches to her shoulder and finds blood from where Bonzo scratched her.

As the suspense ramps up Peggy becomes more nervous and is sitting in her apartment in the dark when she suddenly sees Bonzo’s eyes. She fires a gun and the cat scrambles away. The shot must have been enough to scare Bonzo off permanently (it doesn’t appear that the shot was meant to have hit the kitty) as Mr. Lewis runs around accusing people of having killed his cat, a conclusion he jumps to because Bonzo has disappeared.

Mr. Lewis recovers from his loss by getting an adorable tabby kitten for whom he now plays his bass.

The kitten seems mostly unimpressed but at least tries to warn the man with a mew when he sees someone sneaking up behind his new owner with a bass string twisted around his hands. The warning is to no avail and the kitten becomes a witness to Lewis being murdered in a most unrealistic manner.

Final Mewsings: Kittens don’t mind the murder of musicians who can’t really play.

Many thanks to Mark Murton for letting us know about the cats in this film.

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