THE OSCAR 1966

"You finally made it, Frankie. Oscar Night!. And here you sit, on top of a glass mountain called 'success.' You're one of the chosen five, and the whole town's holding its breath to see who won it. It's been quite a climb, hasn't it, Frankie? Down at the bottom, scuffling for dimes in those smokers, all the way to the top. Magic Hollywood! Ever think about it? I do, friend Frankie, I do…."

And thus begins one of the most sublimely terrible movies ever to grace the screen. A speech rife with overelaborate hyperbole (it's hard to imagine anyone taking the Oscars this seriously, even in the '60s), clumsy metaphors, labored clichés, and the name "Frankie" repeated no less than three times in a single breathless paragraph. Remarkably, three (count 'em, three) screenwriters are responsible for the dialogue in this gilt-edged burlesque, which, given how the characters are prone to repeat the name of the very person to whom they're speaking, sounds as though it were written for the radio.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Stephen Boyd with Johnny Grant, the real-life honorary Mayor of Hollywood

With nary an ironic or self-aware bone in its bathetic, threadbare body, The Oscar is the kind of pandering-yet-earnest, self-serious Hollywood trash no one has the old-school, out-of-touch naiveté to know how to make anymore. A 1966 film that would have felt warmed-over in 1960 (the year Ocean's Eleven and Sinatra's Rat Pack made this kind of clean-cut, pomaded, sharkskin-suited, ring-a-ding-ding brand of cool into a veritable brand), The Oscar is from the Joseph E. Levine (The Carpetbaggers, Harlow) school of overlit, elephantine artifice. Every interior looks like a soundstage, everyone's clothes look as though they've never been worn before, and the characters are so lacquered and buffed they resemble department store mannequins.
As though encouraged to get into the spirit of things, The Oscars' flirting-with-obsolescence "all-star cast" (eight Oscar winners in all) contribute performances that somehow manage to be mannequin stiff and over-the-top at the same time. Performances wholly unacquainted with human psychology, normal speech patterns, or recognizable human behavior.
With each viewing of this unrelentingly unconvincing take on what I assume was intended to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of unbridled ambition, I grow less and less surprised that one of its screenwriters (Harlan Ellison) is known principally for his work in science fiction.

Stephen Boyd as Frankie Fane
"I'm fighting for my life! And there's a spiked boot for anyone who gets in my way."

Elke Sommer as Kay Bergdahl
"It's that seed of rot inside of you that makes you what you are
that you can't change. You just dress it better!"

Tony Bennett as Hymie Kelly
"You lie down with pigs, you come up smelling like garbage!"

Eleanor Parker as Sophie Cantaro
"You go after what you want. In some men, it's admirable. In you, it's...unclean!"

Milton Berle as Arthur "Kappy" Kapstetter
"You never know you're on your way out until
suddenly you realize it would take a ticket to get back in."

The Oscar, subtitled: Memoirs of a Hollywood Louse, is an unabashed laundry list of every show biz/Hollywood cliché handed down since What Price Hollywood? (1932). A beyond-camp, glossy soap opera whose overripe performance and purple prose present the first male-centric challenge to the women of Valley of the Dolls (and Beyond).

Stephen Boyd, he of the narrow frame and chiseled, Tom of Finland profile, is Frankie Fane; your garden-variety ruthless user with a suitable-for-movie-marquees alliterative name. Side note* I don't recommend anyone try playing a drinking game in which you take a shot every time someone in the film says Frankie's name; you'll be rushed to the hospital with alcohol poisoning by the 20-minute mark.

As this told-in-flashback opus begins, Frankie and longtime buddy Hymie Kelly (Tony Bennett, making his film debut/swansong and looking like he wished he were back in San Francisco with his heart) are eking out a living, largely thanks to the bump-and-grind efforts of Frankie's stripper girlfriend, Laurel Scott (Jill St. John).

Jill St. John as Laurel Scott
"What does he think I am, dirt? Every morning I'd get the feeling
he was gonna leave two dollars on the dresser for me!"

After a nasty run-in with a crooked sheriff—a bulldoggish Broderick Crawford playing the flip side of his Highway Patrol TV character—the vagabond trio thumb a ride to NYC where breadwinner Laurel (who's, of course, basically a nice, decent girl who just wants "a kid") soon tires of Frankie's freeloading. This is in spite of the fact that Hymie, the perennial 3^rd wheel and clearly healthy as an ox, also appears to be living with the couple, yet shows no signs of being any more gainfully employed than his pal.

As audiences wait in vain for Hymie to happen upon a microphone and solve everyone's problems by discovering a latent talent for singing (and, in the bargain, providing a much-needed respite from the film's ceaseless stream of risible dialog and '60s slang); Frankie the hound dog decides to accompany Hymie to "a swingin' party in the village…lots of chicks" where he meets aspiring costume designer Kay Bergdahl (Sommer). In no time, Frankie makes his move:

Frankie- "You a tourist or a native?"

Kay- "Take one from column A and two from column B and get an egg roll either way."

On the strength of that nonsensical rejoinder, one would be forgiven for leaping to the assumption that Kay was suffering a stroke-related episode and in need of immediate medical attention, but not our Frankie. Clearly smitten by Kay's pouting accent, silk-awning bangs, and mink eyelashes, our smarmy antihero instead continues to engage the comely blond in more Haiku-inspired small talk. Kay, perhaps as a nod to the film's title, has a way of making everything she says sound like excerpts from an Academy Award acceptance speech:

"I am the end result of everything I've ever learned...all I ever hope to be,
and all the experiences I've ever had."

Uhmm...O.K.

We return now to Laurel—that hip-switchin', nice-walkin', bundle of loveliness—who, in a late-in-coming display of backbone, lays down the law to Frankie when he returns home:

"If you think I'm gonna work my tail off so you can run around with the village chicks…oh, stop spreadin' the pollen around, Frankie...or else!"

Unfortunately for Laurel, her ultimatum doesn't have the desired effect on Frankie as she'd hoped. After spending the evening with hard-to-get Bergdahl, round-heeled Laurel starts to look like used goods to him, and in record time, Frankie, the village pollen-spreader, beats a hasty retreat. So hasty that he misses out on hearing the joyous news that Laurel is pregnant with his child. 

In much the same way Willy Wonka's shiftless Grandpa Joe miraculously finds the energy to haul his wrinkled carcass out of bed once the prospect of a candy factory tour looms; the heretofore serially unemployed Frankie promptly lands a job in the garment district when it affords the opportunity to see more of the glacial Miss Bergdahl. But it isn't long before Kay's middle-European cool proves no match for Frankie's hotheaded, borderline sociopathic personality.

Koo Koo Frankie shows a wise guy actor (Jan Merlin) what it's
like to be on "the business end of a knife."

Frankie expends so much abusive energy exorcising his inner demons ("The way he sees it, no woman's any better than his mother," intones Hymie, deep-thinker) that Kay scarcely has time to examine her own Bad Boy attraction issues ("Sometimes I get the feeling, Frankie, that you ought to be chained up with a ring in your nose!") before their relationship begins to go south and take on all the dysfunctional sparring rhythms of Robert De Niro & Liza Minnelli in NewYork, New York…minus the warmth & mutual respect.

One particularly theatrical outburst of Frankie's captures the rapacious eye of roving talent scout Sophie Cantaro (Parker), who sees in Frankie's mercurial mood swings the makings of a star (Charlie Sheen, no doubt). Faster than you can say, "Bye-bye, Bergdahl! Hello, Cougar Town!" Frankie is whisked off to Hollywood and becomes exactly the kind of noxious nightmare of a movie star you'd expect. Think Neely O'Hara crossed with Helen Lawson combined with every ego-out-of-control rumor you've ever heard about Jerry Lewis, and you get the idea.

Joseph Cotten as Kenneth Regan, head of Galaxy Pictures
"I find myself repelled and repulsed by you."

Of course, this is precisely when the already dizzying lunacy of The Oscar really swings into high gear. Cue the laughably garish sets meant to signify high-style opulence, the tired visual short-cuts (EVERY scene in a studio backlot features strolling cowboys, gladiators, and showgirls in headdresses), and the standard-issue What Makes Sammy Run? rise and fall of our unscrupulous schnook scenario.

Yes, whether it be the simile-laden narration ("Man, he wanted to swallow Hollywood like a cat with a canary."); the rote, claws-his-way-to-the-top conflicts ("The fact is my 10% before taxes is paying your office overhead. And you stop earning it when you stop giving me what I want!"); or clumsy, tin-eared metaphors ("Have you ever seen a moth smashed against a window? It leaves the dust of its wings. You're like that Frankie, you leave a powder of dirt everywhere you touch."), The Oscar leaves nary a cliché unturned and untouched. And for that, we should all give thanks.

Ernest Borgnine and Edie Adams as lowbrow couple Barney & Trina Yale

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The Oscar is artificiality as motif. Without actually intending to do so, director Russell Rouse (who made the must-see Wicked Woman -1953) has crafted a film so phony and plastic, it winds up saying a great deal more about the real Hollywood than this contrived, self-serving fairy tale. A fairy tale that would have us believe that Hollywood is comprised of basically decent, principled, hard-working folks, and that unscrupulous bad apples like Frankie are the rotten exception.

When I watch The Oscar, I always wonder: was this movie pandering to star-struck yokels and hicks from the sticks? Was this fable of Tinseltown-as-Toilet designed to make Nathanael West's "locusts" feel less-resentful of the rich, famous, and privileged? To feed us the comforting fantasy that those beautiful, glamorous people on the screen have it far worse? 

Or had years of lying to itself deluded "The Industry" into believing its own publicity? This can't be how '60s Hollywood actually saw itself, can it? 

In the film's most blatantly parodic role, Jean Hale is hilariously spot-on as the self-absorbed actress Cheryl Barker. The role is an obvious and mean-spirited swipe at Carroll Baker that was likely included at the behest of producer Joseph E. Levine. (Baker and Levine clashed during the filming of Harlow, leading to her suing to get out of her three-picture contract. Baker won, but was blacklisted.)

It's not as though no one knew what a good film about Hollywood looked like: Sunset Boulevard -1950, The Bad & the Beautiful -1952, A Lonely Place -1950, Stand-In -1937. So, I tend to think everyone involved in The Oscar knew precisely what kind of trash they were making (Bennett doesn't recall the experience fondly in his memoirs) and just cashed their paychecks and moved on. But given the expense, effort, and the fact that many equally overstuffed, fake-looking, questionably-acted, and poorly-written films that came before it had somehow managed to find boxoffice success (The Carpetbaggers comes to mind); I can only imagine that the eventual awfulness of The Oscar wasn't as much of a surprise to those involved as was the public's total indifference to it.

Exterior shots of the Oscar ceremony were shot at the 37th Academy Awards in 1965. Bob Hope was indeed the host that year, but as the stage design was different, I suspect these scenes were shot on a sound stage. The Oscar actually did garner two Academy Award nominations in 1967: art direction (remarkably, given how ugly the sets are) and costume design. 

PERFORMANCES

It's a crowded, competitive field, but Stephen Boyd walks away with the honors for The Oscar's most exaggerated, indicating performance. In a film of parody-worthy performances, Boyd's bellowing, bombastic over-emoting (much like Faye Dunaway's in Mommie Dearest) sets the bar. It serves as the tonal rudder for this Titanic testament to overstatement. It's a performance that towers over the rest. And while one might argue he's no worse than anyone else (certainly not Bennett) and only as good as the knuckleheaded screenplay allows; when there's this much collateral damage, every offender has to be held accountable for their fair share of the carnage. 

Frankie's cutthroat efforts to win an Oscar make up the bulk of the 1963 Richard Sale novel
upon which the film is based, but comprise only the last half hour of the movie 

Indeed, in a reversal of my usual standard in camp movies I adore, the women don't really dominate in The Oscar. Despite their towering hairdos and colorful wardrobes, Elke Sommer, Eleanor Parker, Jill St. John, and a woefully over-rehearsed Edie Adams have their work cut out for them in trying to keep pace with the hambone scenery-chewing of Boyd on one side, and the Boo Boo Bear blandness of mono-expression crooner Tony Bennett on the other.

Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci They're Not
Hope you like Tony Bennett's expression here, 'cause that's it...for two whole hours

Add to this, schticky comedian Milton Berle as another one of those saintly talent agents that only seem to exist in Joseph E. Levine films (Red Buttons, another face-pulling comic, played a similar role in Levine's Harlow). Berle's approach to serious drama is something out of an SCTV Bobby Bittman sketch: go so low-wattage as to barely register any vitality at all.

Not sure, but I think knuckle-biting to convey distress went out with silent movies.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
As hard as it is to believe that the Motion Picture Academy actually endorsed this sordid melodrama (although it is thought that the embarrassing flop of this film is responsible for the copyright stranglehold the Academy has had on the use and depiction of the Oscar Award in movies ever since). But one has to wonder about the many drop-in guest appearances of so many "stars" adding verisimilitude and unintentional comic relief. Were they contractual, were favors owed, or were they simply prohibited from reading the entire script?

Edith Head (or an animatronic copy) as Herself

Jack Soo as Sam, Frankie's live-in valet

Famed Hollywood columnist, commie-finger-pointer,
and homophobic blabbermouth, Hedda Hopper 

A puffy Peter Lawford is a little too convincing as Hollywood has-been Steve Marks

Ed Begley as Grobard, the scowling strip club owner

A beaming Frank Sinatra and daughter Nancy, in her brunette phase

Waler Brennan (right) as network sponsor Orrin C. Quentin of Quentiplak Products, Inc.
On the left, one of my favorite character actors, John Holland, as Stevens, his associate 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The bad film delights of The Oscar are so myriad, I can only speculate that its relative unavailability is to blame for its not having risen in camp stature equal to Valley of the Dolls or Mommie Dearest over the years (it's not on DVD and pops up on TV only sporadically). That, and its lack of an ostentatious drag queen aesthetic or even compelling roles for women. I'm not sure why, but a lot of the best camp is rooted in seeing women presented in the traditional, male-gaze "drag" of ornamental allure (big hair, theatrical makeup, elaborate costumes) but behaving in non-traditional ways--i.e., assertive, aggressive, and with a plot-propelling agency (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!). 

The gender-role incongruity of seeing ornamentally decked-out women behaving in the aggressive, toxic ways movies have traditionally ascribed to male anti-hero types, comes as a pleasant surprise and welcome change of pace. It also probably accounts for why a nasty piece of work like Neely O'Hara in Valley of the Dolls tends to remain in one's memory longer than the passive Jennifer North.

Despite giving lip service to the contrary, the women in The Oscar are a pretty passive bunch and more or less serve a traditional, reactive function in the plot. Pointedly, the poised and elegant Sophie Cantaro, as one of the film's two exceptions (the other being the blowsy but street-smart Trina Yale), is presented as both sexually desperate ("You, you're 42. There are many good minutes left for you," a well-meaning, tactless friend tells her) and unable to prevent her so-called "feminine" emotions from playing havoc with professional decision-making.

It's not difficult to imagine that The Oscar's preponderance of masochistic females is due to its three male screenwriters. This leads me to wonder if one of the reasons The Oscar never became the midnight screening hoot-fest its entertaining awfulness might otherwise guarantee is because the women's roles are so toothless. 

But such wrong-headed thinking prevails throughout The Oscar. Making it one of the best of the worst, the apex of the nadir, and unequivocally one for the books. A book no doubt titled: "What The Hell Were They Thinking?"

Clip from "The Oscar" - 1966

BONUS MATERIAL

Update: After being unavailable for decades, a Blu-ray edition of The Oscar was released on February 2, 2020.

Elke Sommer wore the same Edith Head gown to the actual 1966 Academy Awards she donned in the fake ceremony that bookends The Oscar (top photo). Here's a clip of a somewhat botched dual acceptance speech with Connie Stevens for Doctor Zhivago's absent costume designer, Julie Harris. Watch HERE

Although only an instrumental version plays in the film, Tony Bennett sang the Muzak-ready theme song from The Oscar ("Come September") on the soundtrack album. This 45rpm single was an opening day giveaway at many first-run theaters. 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2016

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