EYE OF THE CAT 1969

Why this nifty little thriller is so forgotten and nowhere to be found today is a mystery. It's really a rather intriguing, if sometimes uneven, attempt at mixing Hitchcockian suspense with the kind of supernatural theater of the macabre one might associate with an old episode of Night Gallery. Prior to its release in theaters, Universal Studios generated considerable public interest with TV ads that prominently featured a scene depicting a little old lady in a runaway wheelchair careening helplessly towards traffic (backward yet!) down a particularly precipitous slope of one of San Francisco's many hills. As a San Francisco resident at the time, these commercials made Eye of the Cat the must-see movie of the summer of '69 as far as I was concerned.

This one scene, which owes more than a passing nod to Hitchcock,
was enough to make Eye of the Cat a must-see

To clarify, said “little old lady” is three-time Oscar nominee Eleanor Parker, who was just 46 at the time. Although unfamiliar to me then, Parker, this being just four years after her glamorous turn as the Baroness in The Sound of Music, was another talented actress "of a certain age" (a la Jennifer Jones, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Bette Davis, and Tallulah Bankhead) who found herself prematurely relegated to “horror hag” roles in youth-centric '60s thrillers that took it as a given that audiences would find women over the age of 30 to be as grotesque and frightening as Hollywood obviously did.

Spearheaded perhaps by Hitchcock's The Birds, Eye of the Cat was one of the earliest films to exploit the subtle malevolence and flagrant creep-out factor of packs of animals. A trend that blossomed into a full-blown horror sub-genre in the '70s with films like Willard, Empire of the Ants, Kingdom of the Spiders, and the laughably non-threatening Frogs and Night of the Lepus (giant bunnies!). I saw Eye of the Cat at San Francisco's Embassy Theater on Market Street (on the bottom half of a double bill with Sweet Charity) and could hardly contain my excitement. Not being much of a fan of cats (that has since changed), the movie fairly gave me the willies and, in short, scared the hell out of me...but that didn't stop me from seeing it four times during its run. 

Gayle Hunnicutt as Kassia Lancaster
"Just another beautiful girl with all the wrong values."

Michael Sarrazin as Wylie
"In good mirrors you can see that once I was disastrously beautiful." 

Eleanor Parker as Aunt Danielle (Aunt Danny)
"Nowadays you can't depend on natural causes."

Tim Henry as Luke
"It's not a good idea to take cats lightly."

Joseph Stefano, screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, penned this original screenplay about feline seductress Kassia Lancaster (“It sounds like a cell door slamming shut.”) and her plot to secure the fortune of an ailing San Francisco matron (Parker) by returning to the lonely dowager her beloved derelict nephew, Wylie (Sarrazin), and arranging for the ailing woman's subsequent murder once her will has been altered in his favor. Danielle (or Aunt Danny as she's affectionately/derisively called) is a near-invalid suffering from acute emphysema and lives in a cavernous San Francisco mansion with Wylie’s younger brother, Luke (newcomer Tim Henry), who waits on her in apathetic servitude. She also shares her domicile with dozens of stray, overprotective cats, the sole benefactors of her will. Kassia's diabolical plan hits a major snag when it's discovered that Wylie, the linchpin of the whole operation, is plagued by crippling ailurophobia: a deathly fear of cats.

In addition to this feline homage to Psycho, Eye of the Cat features an atmospheric
score by Lalo Schifrin (Cool Hand Luke) with Bernard Herrmann overtones

Eye of the Cat is not really the “When Good Animals Go Bad” creature-features thriller its title would suggest (a plus, I might add), but rather, an intriguing attempt to modernize those murder and passion crime thrillers that once typified film noir (Gayle Hunnicutt, with mounds of '60s-style big hair, is a terrifically ruthless femme fatale) combined with the supernatural chill-thrill of say, the classic horror of Val Lewton (Cat People). I’d like to report that the experiment was wholly successful, but it kind of loses steam in the middle, only to come to a not entirely satisfying halt just as it’s becoming the shuddery thrill ride its ads promised. Perhaps in more resourceful hands than those of director David Lowell Rich (The Concord… Airport ’79, need I say more?), Stefano’s somewhat colorless script could have lived up to the promise of the film’s sensational (silent) pre-credits sequence.

Eye of the Cat gets off to a very winning start by way of a stylish expository pre-credits sequence that mirrors the collage/split-screen opening sequence of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

The raw material is certainly there: an enigmatic villainess; the San Francisco setting (a wonderful city for thrillers—the picturesque angles of all those hills never fail to unsettle); the misleadingly simple murder scheme; the probable subterfuge and concealed motives behind virtually every action engaged in by every character at all times; and the fascination of cats and their inherent mystery. But perhaps it's because there IS such a rich mine of suspense/chiller material to vein that makes one wish Joseph Stefano's script was more up to the task set forth by the premise. Luckily, Eye of the Cat's gratuitously cryptic dialogue is delivered by a better-than-average cast, all of whom appear gleefully game for this kind of psycho-fright stuff. The enjoyably peevish malevolence at the heart of the story greatly mitigates Mr. Stefano's penchant for trying to generate mystery by leaving his characters and their motivations underdeveloped and unexplored to a maddening degree.

A Way With The Older Ladies
Sporting the ankh pendant and parakeet green Nehru jacket is actor Mark Herron, Judy Garland's 4th husband (2nd gay husband, for those keeping score). He has a small role as Belomondo, the owner of an elite San Francisco beauty salon

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Canines (the four-legged kind, not the teeth) can be scary in real life, but for a dog to scare me onscreen, it has to be either one of those dogs with a face like a fist (a Rottweiler or a Pit Bull) or one of those wolf-snout dogs like in Samuel Fuller's White Dog. Cats, on the other hand, merely have to be themselves. Cute or creepy, cats introduce an element of uncertainty just by showing up, and they always appear to be operating under their own mysterious, sinister agendas. This calls to mind a Night Gallery episode I once saw that made use of a quote from Samuel Butler’s novel, Erewhon: “Even a potato in a dark cellar has a certain low cunning about him which serves him in excellent stead.” If ever two words perfectly summed up my impression of cats, it’s the words “low cunning.”

 Pussy Galore

The late Ray Berwick was the animal wrangler/trainer for the armies of felines used in Eye of the Cat. Berwick also served as the bird trainer on Hitchcock's The Birds. In 1986, Berwick shared his techniques in the well-received book The Complete Guide to Training Your Cat.

My long-held distrust and fear of cats contributed to the effectiveness of Eye of the Cat in much the same way a childhood spent in Catholic schools contributed to my enjoyment of Rosemary’s Baby a year earlier. What's great about both movies is that they work perfectly fine as suspense thrillers, whether one buys into the supernatural angle or not.

Eye of the Cat generates genuine tension as a crime caper thriller, keeps you guessing as a psychological suspense flick, and works your nerves as a supernatural horror film about potentially pernicious pussycats. With so many plot points to juggle, Eye of the Cat can perhaps be forgiven for the mood-killing miscalculation of throwing in an obligatory '60s party scene and a lengthy “romantic montage.” 

The '70s was the era of the romantic montage, and it's not hard to figure out why. Not only was it a narratively economical way to convey an evolving relationship between the characters, but it also provided the opportunity to highlight some "now sound" songs or music on the soundtrack to please the younger set. The Graduate (1967) proved how beneficial to a film's boxoffice a hip soundtrack could be, so it wasn't long before every film coming down the pike put its story on hold to feature a musical montage interlude. 

Perhaps the worst offender is Clint Eastwood’s 1971 directorial debut, Play Misty for Me, in which a pretty taut suspense thriller takes a 20-minute nap while Clint treats us to Carmel, California travelogue and infomercial for The Monterey Jazz Festival.

What's New, Pussycat?

PERFORMANCES
As a longtime fan of glamorous tough broads in movies, it’s obvious why Gayle Hunnicutt’s Kassia Lancaster is my favorite character in the film. She states early on, “I’m not afraid of anything!” and spends the rest of the movie proving it. Dangerous, self-assured, authoritative, and without a doubt the strongest, smartest character in the film, female characters of her stripe would become extremely rare in the '70s as male-dominated “buddy films” grew in popularity. The always fantastic-looking Hunnicutt gives an assured performance whose measured, dominant severity plays nicely off of Michael Sarrazin's easygoing passivity.

I love that we're introduced to Kassia as she's licking her fingers
 and grooming herself like a cat

Eleanor Parker looks wonderful and is very good in an underwritten part which casts her unsympathetically with little foundation. Typed as a salacious older woman, Parker certainly doesn't embarrass herself as Jennifer Jones did in a similar role in Angel, Angel, Down We Go that same year, but in having already played a horny "cougar" on the make in 1965's The Oscar, one wishes the ceaselessly classy actress had found something else to do if these were the only kind of roles Hollywood was throwing her way.

The loss of two-thirds of her lung tissue barely puts a crimp in Aunt Danielle's libidinous, incestuous urges. Here she's seen languishing in that oxygen tent from Harlow in what appears to be the bed from (I'm sure intentionally) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I love a thriller that keeps me guessing, and Eye of the Cat is splendid at throwing so many red herrings and false clues into the pot that no matter where you think the film is headed, it veers elsewhere. But as good a film as it is, and as much as I found it scary and suitably creepy as a pre-teen, I'd be lying if I said that the prodigious amount of male flesh on display in Eye of the Cat didn't in part inspire those multiple viewings at The Embassy back in 1969.

Perhaps in an effort to convey his character's freewheeling ways, Michael Sarrazin spends a great deal of the film shirtless or with nudity artfully concealed. Similarly, dreamboat material co-star Tim Henry (bottom pic with Eleanor Parker) adds a touch of homoerotic interest to a film already overflowing with adultery, promiscuity, and implied incest. Hooray for Hollywood in the '60s!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS 

A highlight of Eye of the Cat are its photogenic San Francisco locations. From The Birds, to Vertigo, to What's Up, Doc?, movies shot in San Francisco invariably win major nostalgia points from me by taking me back to one of my favorite cities. Eye of the Cat makes good use of locales that establish a dynamic sense of time and place.

A rear-projection shot of San Francisco's Market Street. To the left, the Paris Adult Theater

Vina Del Mar Park in Sausalito, just across the Golden Gate Bridge.
The park was a big hippie hangout in the late '60s

The site of the film's centerpiece scene is the ritzy Pacific Heights district of San Francisco, specifically the hill on Octavia Street and Washington beside the landmark 1912 Spreckles Mansion. The top photo is as it appears today; below, a screencap shows how the wall looked before the overgrown hedges.

Eye of the Cat is no classic, but it's a dynamo of a thriller that doesn't deserve its relative obscurity. It certainly holds up for me after all these years, and still packs a punch despite my having overcome my own youthful antipathy toward cats.

"They do come back...."

Eye of the Cat initially opened in San Francisco in August 1969, but I didn't see it until it made it to the second-run theaters in January 1970. I love the Eye of the Cat ad for the Embassy Theater, which bills newcomer Tim Henry instead of star Michael Sarrazin or veteran Eleanor Parker.

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 - 20012