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

THE LOVE MACHINE 1971

The Waiting Is Over...The Love Machine is on the Screen!

So declared the graphically austere poster ads (a gold ankh against a simple black background) heralding the arrival of The Love Machine—sorry, Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine—to movie theaters in 1971. Hard to believe when looking at the film now, but there actually was a degree of anticipation attending the release of The Love Machine, the big-screen adaptation of Susann's 1969 best-selling follow-up novel to the phenomenally successful Valley of the Dolls.  

Much of the anticipation was due to so much having transpired in the four years since 20th Century Fox first released Valley of the Dolls to big boxoffice and a torrent of lousy reviews in 1967. First and most significantly, Jacqueline Susann had proven herself a viable boxoffice name in her own right, capable of selling tickets regardless of the project's relative artistic or critical merit. Secondly, movies themselves had grown increasingly permissive in terms of nudity and language since 1967 (Fox's own Myra Breckinridge had seen to that); thus, there existed, at least among Jacqueline Susann's broad fan base, the hope that the film of The Love Machine would have more overall license to be every bit as tawdry and smutty as the source novel.

Naughty, Naughty

At last, the newfound permissiveness in movies allowed gay characters to be acknowledged as such, and they weren't required to die before the final reel (although they usually did, anyway). For movies that sought to be daring and hip, the inclusion of gay characters—always depicted as stereotypically as possible—was shorthand for provocative, taboo decadence. Here we have David Hemmings, in full flame with a cigarette holder, as fashion photographer Jerry Nelson and his blow-dried inamorato, British Shakespearean actor Alfie Knight (portrayed by Clinton Greyn).

In the minds of many, there also existed the misguided belief that The Love Machine was going to be a better film than Valley of the Dolls. Why? Well, putting aside for a moment the obvious...that it would be hard to make a movie that could be worse, it was Jacqueline Susann herself (who had never made secret her dislike for the movie version of Valley of the Dolls ) who promised fans that both she and her husband, Irving Mansfield, were taking steps to guarantee that they both would have creative input in bringing The Love Machine to the screen. 

Indeed, thanks to a lawsuit filed by Susann against 20th Century-Fox and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)—that unofficial, unauthorized, non-sequel—Susann and Mansfield were able to take The Love Machine to the more lucrative and contractually friendly pastures of Columbia Pictures. Columbia paid Susann $1.5 million for the film rights and granted her a possessive author's credit for the movie's title (Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine). With her husband installed as executive producer (apt enough, given that he was a TV producer by profession and The Love Machine was set in the television industry), this time around, the Susann-Mansfield household held a slightly tighter grip on the creative reins of bringing Susann's bestseller to the screen.  

The Hitchcock of Coarseness
Jacqueline Susann makes another cameo appearance in one of her films.
(That's LA newsman Jerry Dunphy on the left)

Possessive film titles like Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine are almost always clumsy and invariably rooted in contract perks, ego-stroking, and product branding. But like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval, an author's name attached to the title also implies that the film will be a more accurate, authentic realization of the writer's intent and vision. Well, as anyone can attest who's seen Stephen King's abominable self-penned 1997 TV-movie adaptation of his novel, The Shining (he disliked the many alterations and omissions in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film), an author's participation in the adaptation of their own work is in no way a reliable guarantor of anything resembling quality. Or even watchability.

John Phillip Law as Robin Stone

Dyan Cannon as Judith Austin

David Hemmings as Jerry Nelson

Jodi Wexler as Amanda

Maureen Arthur as Ethel Evans

The Love Machine tells the story of the swift rise and fall of Robin Stone, an ambitious local news anchor who ruthlessly muscles his way into the job of network television president. Despite looking thin, wan, and in desperate need of a blood transfusion, Robin is an irresistible ladykiller who leaves a trail of broken-hearted, blue-bathrobed lasses in his wake. A cad with Nielsen ratings and audience-share figures where his heart should be, Robin Stone is like a male version of Faye Dunaway's Diana Christiansen in Network (1976), crossed with Valley of the Dolls' Helen Lawson, with a little of Stephen Boyd's Frankie Fane from The Oscar (1966) on the side.

Like most of Jacqueline Susann's characters, Robin Stone is allegedly based on a real-life individual. In this instance, the late CBS TV executive James T. Aubrey—the man we can thank for The Beverly Hillbillies and a host of other fragrantly lowbrow moneymakers during the '60s. Like his movie counterpart, Aubrey is said to have been a calculatingly shrewd cookie who held the TV-viewing audience in the lowest contempt and made a fortune banking on the public's insatiable appetite for mediocrity. Judging by the popularity of today's Jersey Shore/Kardashians train wrecks, you can't say the guy wasn't something of a visionary.

The Love Machine
In all but the most archly ironic circumstances, Jackie Susann failed to get the public to adopt "dolls" as popular slang for barbiturates. Her efforts getting "The Love Machine" into the vernacular as slang for TV sets (because it "sells love, creates desire"...you see) fared even worse.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

My fondness for a specific brand of bad film is as difficult to explain as it is to defend. It's not like I just get off on making fun of them. On the contrary, most of these films are very professional, technically well-made films in every regard. What I think I respond to is that scary zone in the creative arts where the attempt fails to match the execution. That twilight zone where all the talent, creativity, and hard work on one end somehow yields the 100% opposite of what anyone intended. It fascinates me because it can occur at any moment, no matter how heavily the deck is stacked for success. For example, consider Marlon Brando putting cotton in his cheeks in The Godfather. That could have turned out disastrous, but instead became iconic. Or what about Al Pacino's Cuban accent in Scarface. What an enormous risk that was! It would have derailed the entire picture if audiences found it ridiculous and started to chuckle whenever he spoke.  

No,  this isn't a shot of Robin Stone visiting Pee Wee's Playhouse.
This is just a horrific example of chic '70s decor.

I'm pointing out that the collaborative art of film is often like a dance on a wire; fiasco or triumph is sometimes based on tiny, intangible miscalculations or moments of blind overconfidence. Something that might not even be visible until after the film is already in the can. Hindsight makes it seem like an overripe performance or a particular narrative miscalculation could somehow have been avoided, but that's not true. It's the whole crapshoot element of it all that fascinates me.

If it's true in life that we learn most from our failures, I also believe there are similar lessons to be gleaned for the film buff confronted with a well-intentioned mess. When you watch a film that costs millions, involves hundreds of decisions, hours of hard work, the collaboration of many talented individuals...and the result is sometimes deplorable, you're staring straight into the face of the elusiveness of excellence. That or perhaps hubris, too many cooks spoiling the broth, or maybe (worst of all) professional cynicism: films that don't really care if they're good, so long as they make money.

Ambitious Robin Stone goes head-to-head with network
programming executive Danton Miller (Jackie Cooper)

 The Love Machine tries to be a hard-hitting, cynical, claw-his-way-to-the-top drama along the lines of The Sweet Smell of Success and The Young Philadelphians, but for all its faddish clothes, bare bosoms, and cuss words, it's fundamentally a creaky Fannie Hurst melodrama. It strives hard to be sensational and daring, but its focus needs readjusting. The story is too shallow to be good character drama, and its depiction of the inner workings of the TV industry is too superficial and cliche-ridden to serve effectively as expose. Even with all this considered, The Love Machine still manages to be a curiously addictive viewing experience, if only due to its utter cluelessness as to how airless and old-fashioned it is. 

The real star of The Love Machine is Robin's collection of blue bathrobes.
It got so that I started to miss them if they failed to show up in a scene.

PERFORMANCES

The likeable late actor (and last-minute replacement) John Phillip Law portrays Robin Stone with startling ineffectualness. Last seen sporting angel's wings and a feathered diaper in Barbarella, Law, who by all accounts sounds like a terribly nice guy in real life, latches onto Robin Stone's closed-off, inexpressive side and gives a performance that's too stiff even for a character referred to as a machine. He's given no help from the script, whose risible dialog suits the actor's robotic delivery. I've read that Jacqueline Susann (ever the fantasist) wanted Sean Connery for the role.

John Phillip Law's somewhat lifeless performance is partly due to his stepping in at the last moment as a replacement for originally-cast Brian Kelly (star of TV's Flipper), injured in a motorcycle accident three weeks into filming. In several scenes, it's evident that Law is wearing ill-fitting clothes cut for the shorter-in-stature Kelly.

Dyan Cannon has always been a favorite of mine, but her performance here (no great shakes, but heads above the rest of the cast) is consistently undermined by the jaw-dropping, high-fashion get-ups she's called upon to wear. Given that she's not really provided a believable character to play, her bizarre fashion sense always takes center stage. According to a Jacqueline Susann bio, Cannon was so struck by a case of the giggles during a preview of The Love Machine (inspired by both her performance and the film) she had to excuse herself from the theater.

Whose idea was it to dress the lovely Dyan Cannon, playing the wife of a television executive, in a test pattern? The answer to that rhetorical question is Oscar-nominated costume designer (Giant, What a Way to Go!, Morituri, The Way We Were) Moss Mabry.

In the movie Barbarella, Jane Fonda's title character makes the sound observation, "A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming." I've an observation of my own that's equally on-point:

A good many bad movies feature fashion shows. A parade of Moss Mabry's coif-centric costume designs amusingly pad out The Love Machine's running time.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

For anyone finding the film hard going (it's relatively slow by today's standards), I beg you to stick around for the climactic "Hollywood party fight scene." Here Ms. Cannon (balancing 23 pounds of teased hair) finally abandons her heretofore starchy acting style and lets loose with that infectiously raucous laugh of hers, setting in motion a truly memorable free-for-all that should have become a camp highlight by now. Finally, in trying to top Valley of the Dolls' infamous wig-down-the-toilet scene, The Love Machine finally does something right.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

When The Love Machine was first released to theaters, I was a mere 13 years old. Too young to see the much-ballyhooed motion picture but old enough to take my mom's paperback novel to school and pore over the "dirty parts" with my schoolmates. I'm not sure what my problem was at such an early age, but I was very much taken with this sleazy novel. Particularly the iconography of the ankh ring Robin Stone wears on the paperback cover art. (In my defense, I grew up in San Francisco during the hippie era, and ankhs were all over the place.) I also unsuccessfully tried to persuade my sister to buy that Faberge "Xanadu" perfume that was cross-promoted in the film (ads for which recommended you mark "his" favorite spot with an "x").

Xanadu by Faberge
Samples were given away at many theaters showing The Love Machine

2021 update

Reader swag! A longtime reader of this blog who has since become a dear friend (although we've never met) gave me the shock of my life when she sent me this vintage Xanadu Cologne she unearthed online. So, thanks to a very kind gesture of thoughtful generosity, a tiny bit of The Love Machine movie premiere experience is mine some 50 years after the fact. 

In spite of my unseemly youthful preoccupation with this movie, I didn't actually see The Love Machine until I was well into adulthood. However, I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed. A little bored, perhaps (this movie takes itself WAY too seriously), but not disappointed. And while it's not nearly as much fun as Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine has more than enough in the way of over-the-top fashions, poky dialog, and questionable performances to rank high among my favorite guilty pleasures.

"...and when you put it on, you'll live forever. And love me forever."

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2011