Top of the evening, kiddies. Tonight I am excited to bring you another great film from my “Unsung Wonders” series. For those new to the game, I dig through the bargain bins and dollar-walls, searching for the gems that were unoticed and unloved, and then bring them to the attention of you, the gentle reader.
Cat’s Eye is one of those early eighties movies where the sound is bad and the special effects, well…not so special. The upside of this is that the writers and actors in this era of cinema seem to try more. In this collection of Stephen King short stories we see exactly that, with a surprising cast for such a low-budget film, including such quiet luminaries as James Woods, Drew Barrymore, and Alan King.
Why was this movie so quickly and easily forgotten? Well, it is a simple matter of historical accident. Back in the early eighties, Stephen King was at what most readers agree was his prime. His books were a wonderful combination of character, setting, and classic horror tropes recast in new and interesting ways. His short stories and novels were being made into movies very quickly, with no less than ten of them being made between 1980 and 1985. And we are not talking about the t.v. version of the Shining with the “funny” brother from Wings; we are talking about Firestarter, Christine, the original Shining, Cujo, the Dead Zone and Children of the Corn. There was just a glut of awesome Stephen King movies, and in the midst of it a classic like Cat’s Eye was simply ignored.
It came in 1985, right after Firestarter, and the fresh success and fun in all of it is clear. Drew Barrymore plays multiple roles and is simply named “Our Girl” in the credits. Every movie, book, or poster in the movie is for another Stephen King movie or book, complete with cameos from a crazed St. Bernard and a familiar convertible sporting a bumpersticker which says “I am pure evil. I am Christine.” In a particularly amusing moment, the movie James Woods watches in the “Quitter’s Inc.” segment is The Dead Zone. All of this is done in good fun; Stevie was flush with money and success, and he got to let go and indulge himself.
The movie follows an incredibly resourceful cat as it treks cross-country in an attempt to save a little girl from an unnamed danger. His life intersects with two tales along the way, taken from the short stories “Quitter’s Inc.” and “The Ledge”. In what makes for an interesting balance, the entire storyline of the cat is supernatural, with a psychic link with the little girl and an eventual confrontation with a monster, while the other two stories are of entirely human extremes.
The first story stars James Woods as a smoker who wishes to quit. He goes to a company which uses rather extreme tactics to achieve its goal, including constant surveillance, kidnapping and torture of loved ones, and, finally, death if the client does not quit smoking. This company was apparently founded due to the death of a mob boss from lung cancer, and they take their goal very seriously.
The second tale chronicles a classic tale of cruelty and revenge. A high-stakes gambler discovers that his wife is having an affair and has the object of her affections kidnapped. He offers him a chance to go free and live, if he can only climb around the ledge of the skyscraper they are in and come back into the room. When, after many misadventures, our hero makes his way back into the room, he finds that, predictably, the gambler is a poor loser.
The framing tale, that of the little girl, finishes the movie. Amanda, played by Drew Barrymore, is plagued by nightmares of a tiny monster who lives in her wall, and the cat has come to her rescue. The episode is filled with humor, as the tiny monster is just…cute. His appearance and noises make one giggle, even as he is stealing the breath of Amanda. The final battle, where the cat has chased the monster onto a spinning record and shot him into a fan, is high adventure coupled with comedy, with cat and monster doing battle to “I’ll Be Watching You” by the Police played at 78 RPMs.
The movie is a lot of fun, well written and directed, and stands the test of time, but this is not what makes it an “Unsung Wonder”. Like Firestarter, what makes Cat’s Eye stand out is the acting. Most of the actors had recently been in other Stephen King movies, and their ease with his writing and each other is apparent. Their characters, as per usual for King, are very much individuals, and each actor makes us feel that. It might have been “just another horror flick”, but they never phone it in, not even for a moment.
Stay tuned for the next “Unsung Wonder”!
thePuck is a writer, geek, and social media junkie at large. View his blog at www.thepuckwrites.com.
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July 22nd, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Whatz up, I am glad I pressed harder enough until I found stephen king’s the stand dvd, because this post on was extremely helpful. Just last Tuesday I was pondering on this quite a bit.