Columbia Pictures
Starring: Peter Sellers, Peter Cook
Directed by: Bryan Forbes
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!
Synopsis: A comedy of errors occurs when two elderly brothers (John Mills and Ralph Richardson) are the last of a group of men who stand to win money from a tontine and find themselves the center of attention from their greedy and not-so-greedy heirs.
Cat Cattle Call: One of the men’s nephews, Morris Finsbury (Peter Cook) visits Doctor Pratt (Peter Sellers), a physician he has learned may be willing to do something illegal, in the hopes of obtaining a falsified death certificate. As he walks up the stairs to the doctor’s flat he hears cats meowing and there are numerous cats on the landing outside the man’s office.
Once inside the office there are even more cats.
The place is filled with cats! One even falls from a shelf.
Morris sits down on one cat in a chair and Dr. Pratt tells him not to sit on that moggy because she is the finest ratter in the East End. Needless to say Dr. Pratt is not all there.
When Dr. Pratt walks to his desk he picks up a gray cat from his chair and says, “Sorry, Basil.”
Opening his desk drawer a tiny tabby kitten pops out. Dr. Pratt asks Morris if he would like to buy a moggy.
When Morris returns later for the death certificate, Dr. Pratt insists on washing his hands first, which he then wipes on a nearby cat.
The little tabby kitten watches as Dr. Pratt signs, dripping ink from the pen.
Dr. Pratt then uses the little kitten to blot the ink.
After Morris leaves, Dr. Pratt refers to the kitten as Mervin as another cat approaches.
Final Mewsings: Cats have many uses!
Many thanks to Francesco for being the first to recommend this movie to us!
Relevant Links:
To discuss this film and other cats in movies and on television, join us on
Facebook and Twitter.