Welcome to Weirdsville Wednesday deep deep down in The Dungeon! Tonight's feature is a fairly obscure little flick outta France that was originally titled "La Louve Solitaire" starring Danièle Gaubert as the Cat-Girl!
The English version was released as "The Golden Claws Of The Cat-Girl," or as you can see here, "The Golden Claws Cat-Girl!" Once again, big kudos to Brian Horrorwitz over at
The Trash Palace for providing us with a copy! When you need a fix for weird flix, Brian's the man!
Well, basically "The Golden Claws Cat-Girl" is just a vehicle for the lovely and sexy Danièle Gaubert to strut her stuff, and strut it she does!
The original music in the film was created by Francis (Love Story) Lai in one of his earlier efforts! Francis has worked steadily since the 60's and is still active today! That's quite a
chord!
The Cat-Girl is essentially just an acrobatic cat burglar with a penchant for gold and jewels! She also has a very cool car!
She's also got a cool floor in her pad.......
............and a cool hidden safe built into her refrigerator that would make Walter go from White to Green with envy!
The Cat-Girl gets caught and is forced into doing a job for the government with the aid of Michel (Man With The Transplanted Brain) Duchaussoy as Bruno, a talented lip reader! Michel worked steadily until he passed away just last year! As Bruno, it's his job to spy on the bad guys, and by reading their lips from a distance, he'll know when it's safe for the Cat-Girl to swing on a roof top rope and go over and get the goods! It should be a piece of cake, as long as it doesn't rain!
It rains!!!
The bad guys want their stuff back, and hold Cat-Girl hostage with a needle gun!
This shot is just wacky looking!
Bruno tries to save the Cat-Girl, but he gets held hostage too, and when he attempts a daring escape, he gets shot with the needle gun, and does one of the weirdest ballet death dances ever put on film with a leap and a pirouette before landing splat on his face!
Before there were CD's there were cassettes, and before cassettes, there were 8 tracks, and before 8 tracks, there were 4 tracks!
Revenge is sweet!!
Just to prove that life's not fair, cover girl Danièle Gaubert passed away in 1987 at the tender age of 44, another victim of cancer!
I'm always amazed at how titles get translated. "La Louve Solitaire" is French for "The Lone Wolf" or "The Solitary Wolf." And yet the title gets turned into some such about a "Cat-Girl" by the production company that brings it to America. Sure, she's a cat burglar, but come on, French isn't that hard to translate. I wonder what the Greek translation called her...
ReplyDeleteIndeed Randall! Another alternate title for the film that I failed to mention was "The Lone She Wolf!"
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there's links to download the film and the music . I am great fun of Francis Lai ?
ReplyDeleteYasser,
ReplyDeleteNo download links, but the dvd can be purchased at www.trashpalace.com! Tell Brian I said Hi!!
As far as title translation, literal translation isn't always the target of a film distributor, so using an Anglicized version of the original title may not have been an issue, or even desitable at the time. Just take a look at the various Marx Brothers film retitlings, for instance, including those in predominantly English-speaking countries (as well as Italy, France, Spain, etc.).
ReplyDeleteAnd you can see that it wasn't just a "company that brought it to America" that added the feline titling. Take a look at the 1968 ad from Italy at https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=590077944440526&set=a.245404572241200.54195.245402522241405&type=1&theater
ReplyDelete