Morningside Productions
Starring: Kerwin Mathews, Waveney Lee, Charles Lloyd Pack
Directed by: Jack Sher
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!
Synopsis: Based on the book Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. Dr. Lemuel Gulliver (Kerwin Mathews) is washed overboard during a sea voyage and finds himself traveling between some very strange lands.
Cat Burglar (Scene Stealer): After visiting Lilliput where he is a giant to everyone, Gulliver visits Brobdingnag where everyone is a giant to him. He finds favor with the Queen (Mary Ellis) much to King Brob’s (Grégoire Aslan) dismay. King Brob conspires with the sorcerer Makovan (Charles Lloyd Pack) to prove Gulliver is a witch so they can burn him. In Makovan’s quarters his daughter Shrike (Waveney Lee) eagerly awaits the trial her father is going to perform on Gulliver. She is holding a black cat.
Shrike seems particularly interested in watching Gulliver be burned but Makovan explains that witch burnings take place at midnight, past her bedtime.
The girl Glumdalclitch (Sherri Alberoni) comes in carrying a basket containing Gulliver. She says she was told to bring him and Makovan tells her to set him on the table. Glumdalclitch replies, “Not with that cat here.”
Without a second thought, Makovan takes the cat from his daughter, carries it to the window as the cat screeches (dubbed in) and drops it out.
Later Gulliver anticipates Makovan’s trick to turn him blue and uses chemicals to change the baths so that he turns red instead. Makovan does not believe the solution will turn things red and takes some before walking to the window to pour it on himself. Suddenly the cat comes flying back through the window (in a classic catapult moment when a cat actor is literally thrown into a scene) and knocks the vial over, the liquid pouring on him.
The cat is turned red and while Shrike is crying about it and as Makovan is looking at the cat, Gulliver knocks the solution on the man’s head, turning his hair red.
Final Mewsings: Cats are apparently boomerangs.
Many thanks to Robin for letting us know about the cat in this movie!
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