I was going through some of the free movies on cable and I watched this 1985 Lewis Teague anthology movie with some interesting stars. James Woods, Alan King, Drew Barrymore, Robert Hayes, Candy Clark, Mike Starr and a few others. Teague had directed Cujo before this and seeing that movie once was enough. After Cat's Eye he directed The Jewel Of The Nile, the sequel to Romancing The Stone. I liked both of those but think I only have the first movie. After that he didn't directed anything much I was interested in. One of his earlier movies was Alligator and that was fairly good. Fun in a low budget giant critter movie kind of way. I haven't seen it in years. I checked out NetFlix and put their copy on my queue. Not sure when I'll get to see it what with it being disc 118 on the list. John Sayles wrote the script for Alligator. It was ok, there's a nice bit of humor in some fun scenes. Robert Forester is the main hero. The three stories in Cat's Eye are tied together by the cat in the poster. He appears in each story and acts as a bit of a catalyst. The cat was a better actor than some of them.
All three stories in Cat's Eye are by Stephen King who's also credited with the screenplay. Now I'm a fan of King's non-fiction magazine pieces but I've never finished any of his books. I only tired twice but I'm not much of a written horror fan. They're supposed to be scary but I just couldn't see it. Mostly I was bored and I never finished either The Shining or The Stand. I have rarely not finished a book I've started. I bet there are less than ten books on that unread book list for the whole of my reading life. Anyway, the first story in Cat's Eye has James Woods signing up for a no-smoking program with Alan King's company. Some of you, who are older, might remember King from his stand up comedy routines on 60's and 70's variety shows. Occasionally he acted in movies. In this movie his stop smoking program uses aversion therapy, with a side dish of kilowatts, to make you quit. Here's the twist. If you smoke, and they'll know because they're watching all the time, it'll be your spouse that gets tortured. They'll toss her into a metal cage and zap her with electricity. You'll have to watch her get shocked, listen to her scream, watch her leap around. You know that won't go well when you get home later. A second cigarette and it'll be the daughter doing the electro-boogaloo. Third time, Alan King tells James, we'll rape your wife. They have an ugly evil man on retainer for that job. Fourth time, Alan flashes his gun, is the last time. At this point I found the whole premise so stupid that I fell out of the movie and yelled at the images on my tv. I should know better, that movie is too stupid to listen. You know I like me some dumb ass stuff but I just couldn't believe that anyone would go along with this program. It's level of stupidity is high, even for a horror movie. Alan and his crew bully James who tries to fight back but he's a weak ass pussy and he fails. I have no respect for that guy and sure enough he let's me down even more by signing up for Alan's weight loss program. It's pretty simple and less tortureous for the family. If you don't keep your weight down, they'll snip a bit of flesh off of your body to help remind you they're watching. Keep you on your toes, which along with fingers are perfect for the snip, snip, snip. There's not much of an ending. Very disappointing.
The other two segments are slightly better and that's only barely. They aren't even Night Gallery good and the whole movie rates a 6 on the IMDb. That's too high for me but there you go. In the 2nd story Robert Hayes plays a washed up tennis star who's goal is to run off with the wife of a gangster. What? Smack to the head! How stupid is that? Perhaps playing tennis makes you stupid. Of course the gangster kidnaps Robert and forces him to walk around the 38th floor of his apartment building on a 5 inch ledge. If Robert makes it he gets to live. The gangster will toss in a $50,000 cash prize and the gangster's wife. Living and cash are great but a gangster's wife makes no sense. No sane person would want a gangster's wife. Baggage like that gets your ass drown in a river. Robert does make it around the building even though the gangster keeps trying to knock him off the ledge. A poor loser the gangster kills his wife. Robert flips out and after getting the upper hand he forces the gangster to do the same stroll in the clouds. Our bad guy falls off the building but the poor animation of the falling body ruins the scene. End of story two. The third story is a supernatural one with a little tiny demon. It's nothing special. Candy Clark plays Drew Barrymore's mom and the cat that appears through out the movie shows up to help her fight a little demon that came in to the house. By then I didn't care enough about the movie. I'd skip this one if I were you but if you want you can watch it here.
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