Watch The Shadow of the Cat For Free

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Reading an old issue of British film mag Empire,I noticed a review from Kim Newman which said that people could hold a Barbara Shelley "cat" double bill,thanks to (the very good) Cat Girl and this John Gilling-directed flick coming out on DVD. Introduced to Hammer Horror with Gilling's superb dream-logic Gothic tale The Plague of the Zombies,I started searching round for more info,and I was thrilled to find the whole film online!,which led to me following the black cat.The plot:Licking their lips for the contents of a new will her husband pushed her to sign, Ella Venable's decide to speed things up and kill her.As they bury the body in the garden,her butler Andrew,husband Walter and the maid Clara promise to keep the killing secret,with the only one who does not agree being Ella's loyal cat Tabitha. Whilst trying find Ella's original will (which left nothing to him) Walter invites niece Elizabeth "Beth" Venable round,as the police search for "missing" Ella. As Walter secretly looks for the original will,Beth notices the trio are terrified of a cat!,who soon steps out of the shadows with its murderous paws.View on the film:Quoting Edgar Allan Poe opening lines of The Raven,the screenplay by George Baxt creams this "unofficial" Hammer Horror with a tightly spun murder mystery shadowed with a peculiar Gothic Horror purr.Largely taking place in the Venable house,Baxt attacks each of the murdering residences with a macabre delight,as the deaths in the cats eyes allows Baxt to tangle the killers in deadly Rube Goldberg twists. Hissing at the cat and Beth for asking questions about Ella's whereabouts,Baxt unrolls a delicious murder mystery,filling the dark corners of the house with frightful whispers over fears of Beth unlocking their secrets.Despite the black and white presentation taking away his remarkable use of colours, director John Gilling impressively still digs his claws into a rich Hammer Horror Gothic atmosphere.Casting a sense of fearful unease bubbling underneath the false concern for Ella, Gilling and cinematographer Arthur Grant stylishly whip-pan across each killer and strikes the viewer with their sly smiles. Holding back on the gore,Gilling dives in to the ridiculousness of the situation with fantastic first person tracking shots which make the cat look like a 60 foot beast. Staying in bed over fears of the avenging kitty, André Morell gives a splendid performance as Walter,who acts as a warm family figure,whose image Morell tears down to reveal the money grabber with scratches of death on his hands. Joining fellow Hammer star Morell,the elegant Barbara Shelley gives a terrific performance as Beth,whose puzzlement over everyone's fear of the cat Shelly curls up with a quick-witted questioning side,as Walter goes after that darn cat.

***SPOILERS*** The planned murder as well as disappearance of Ella Venable, Catherine Lacey, by her butler and maid Andrew and Clara, Andrew Crawford & Freda Jackson, went off with out a hitch with Andrew bashing the elderly women's brains in and with the help of Clara burying her body in and around the swamps outside the Venable family home. The only problem is that Ella's sweet and cuddly cat Tabitha saw them commit the murder and where they buried Ella's body.This all was done under the orders and instructions of Ella's husband Walter, Andre Morell, whom Ella was going to cut out of her will and replace with her niece Beth, Barbara Shelly. It's Beth who among everyone in the Venable can was not obsessed with money and showed genuine love and affection for her aunt. It's in fact Tabitha who starts the ball rolling in avenging her mistress Ella's murder. And in the end she not only has everyone involved, both actively and behind the scenes, pay for their crime but also leads the police to where Ella's was buried in order to have her get a proper as well as Christian burial. That's more then could be said for her victims the entire, with the exception of Beth, Venable clan.Haunted house movie with the one doing the both haunting as well as killing being the family cat Tabitha who looks during the entire movie so cute and harmless that it was hard to believe that she was doing all this carnage. The cat seemed to gather strength as well as invincibility as the movie rolled along making her seem almost ghost-like or supernatural. At first Tabitha seemed a bit confused and in trouble when she was caught in a trap set by Ella's killers that she foolishly got caged in. But it was the bumbling buffoon of a butler Andrew who, by having his head stuck up his behind, let her escape and in trying to recapture her fell into and was swallowed up by the swamp. With Tabitha now free and given a second life, out of the nine that she already has, she went on to the business of finishing the job, of avenging Ella's murder, that she had already started.

Ah, how the internet 'creates' new mythology. 'Shadow of the Cat' prophetically opens with a quote from Poe's The Raven, and for most of its running time trots out a parade of mystery movie clichés with wildly uneven results. The anvil of foreshadowing plunges oft, and heavily, and the exposition fairy sure does sprinkle her dust over all the cobweb festooned proceedings. My memories (from 70's television) of this film were actually quite fond, but alas time has not been so kind to 'Shadow of the Cat' upon recent review. As for its legendary 'Hammer' status, I proffer the opinion that upon not-so-close scrutiny the script in NO way follows the Hammer formula, and that just because John Gilling, Barbara Shelley, Bray Studios and some production staff were involved- does not this a Hammer film make. This myth needs clearing up, and I quote a treasured volume (purchased in 1973 when I was 13) "The House of Horror The Story of Hammer Films", Ed. Allen Eyles, Robert Adkinson and Nicolas Fry, Lorrimer Publishing, London UK, p. 110- '...it might be noted that 'Shaow of the Cat' and 'Light Up the Sky', two films that have been characterized as Hammer pictures, are in fact not productions of the company'. Until these editors can be positively proved ill informed (from where did they draw their information?) the case seems obvious. '90's reprint editions of this book completely omit page 110 and the gallery 'Brides of Dracula and others' and ignorantly include 'Shadow of the Cat' in the filmography. One might as well include films like 'The Flesh and the Fiends' (another Gilling Gothic from the period) etc as Hammer films simply because they resemble the company's output. Indeed the internet has made unjustifiable legends out of much (the incredibly over-rated, 'Twins of Evil' springs immediately to mind), and while I still enjoy these films they belong in their pop culture place, not elevated to some ridiculous fantasy standard that they most definitely do not attain. That said, 'Shadow of the Cat' was obviously influenced by Hammer, but script wise and structurally it is ostensibly not.

Although supposedly made under the name of BHP Productions for contractual reasons, there is no doubt that what you are watching is a Hammer film. Everything about it reflects the Hammer trademarks of the era. The lighting, the music, the photography, the use of the exteriors at Bray (Hammer's first and most fruitful home) and the ever-present Black Park (a green lung in urban Slough that Hammer turned into everything from a Swiss mountain stream to a tropical river filled with piranha fish) - nothing is out of place. The plot is typical Grand Guignol - a rich elderly woman is murdered by her relatives for her money. They might get away with it too, except her pet cat takes exception to the plot and decides to exact revenge. While not thought-provoking by any means, the film moves confidently and swiftly along. Director John (Plague of Zombies, The Reptile) Gilling papers enough shocks over the holes in the plot to keep it interesting and the cast (led by Barbara (The Gorgon) Shelley and Andre Morell) do their jobs efficiently and entertainingly. The movie, though, belongs to Tabitha... Oh, and do you get the significance of the widow's reading of Poe's "The Raven" at the start of the film? Creepy stuff!