THE SHADOW OF THE CAT - Hammer Studios - "That Damn Cat!" (1961)

Great title, Good movie, Bad copy, so it goes, and welcome to another classic Saturday Night Special pretty damn deep down in The Dungeon!

"The Shadow Of The Cat" is so obscure I could only find a copy in England! Who knows now, it might stream any number of places, but at the time, I couldn't find it anywhere, hence the quality of tonight's feature!

Catherine (The Sorcerers, The Mummy's Shroud) Lacey is the not very well liked but very rich Ella Venable! You don't need to know much more about her, she's about to be murdered! She's reading Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" to her beloved cat.........

TABITHA!!

A high percentage of the films we've written about here have had a gimmick of some sorts, and what makes "The Shadow Of The Cat" stand out from a ton of other movies of the same ilk is what I'm going to call "Cat-O-Vision," or shots from the cat's perspective!

This print was so bad, I wasn't sure at first if it was just a bad video transfer or an actual planned effect, but it became pretty obvious fairly soon!

The storyline is that Ella Venable's husband has solicited the help of his servants to kill off his mean and spiteful wife and share the profit, but the problem lies in the fact that Tabitha has witnessed the whole thing, and it worries everybody a lot!

Another shot through Tabitha's eyes shows them burying Ella in a shallow grave in the swamp!

André (Professor Bernard Quatermass) Morell is Ella's vile husband Walter Venable, and he has got some bad feelings about that cat! He knows she knows, and he's really worried about it!

The beloved UK "First Lady Of Horror" Barbara Shelley is Ella's niece Beth Venable! Beth along with other family members were summoned to the Venable home after Ella's disappearance, and although Tabitha won't have anything to do with anyone else in the house for good reasons, she doesn't have a problem being normal and affectionate to Beth because Beth is the only nice person in the whole house!!

They're chasing poor Tabitha all over the place without any success, but she eventually gets hungry, and they trap her!

Andrew (The Gay Lady) Crawford plays the killer butler Andrew! Besides being a murderer, Andrew is also an idiot! He is left with the task of disposing the bagged cat in the swamp, but as he was merrily running off to do the nasty task, Tabitha fell out of the loosely tied bag! The cat runs off into the swamp and onto a small floating branch where Andrew follows her, and almost immediately gets sucked up into some quicksand and his deserved departure!

The maid Clara who was also in on the whole deal freaks out when when she spots some muddy cat tracks from the recently deceased feline! Clara was played by Freda (Brides Of Dracula, Monster Of Terror) Jackson!

Tabitha just keeps watching and waiting!

Walter never admits to the rest of the family members that he is responsible for Ella's murder, but he solicits their assistance to kill that damned cat, and he will share a large portion of the re-written will with them! Ella's original will left everything to niece Beth, but before she was murdered, Ella was coerced into re-writing her will leaving everything to asshole Walter! This shot shows the group looking at the body of the maid Clara who just fell down the stairs and died after she tripped over the cat! William (Island Of The Burning Damned) Lucas is Jacob Venable, Richard (Village Of The Damned) Warner is Edgar Venable, and last but not least, bitchy Vanda (The Earth Dies Screaming) Godsell (Not Goodsell) is Louise Venable! What a pack of cards!

Maybe I can get some guvment money if I do a public service announcement! Kids! Do you really need a good reason to never smoke? Just take a good look at this picture! Unless you'd like to look like this for the rest of your life, never start, but if you have, then stop smoking right now! It's never too late!!

Walter's got a bad ticker, so maybe the other Venables will get a better cash out if a window is left open and the cat is accidently allowed to enter his room!

This dumbfuck Venable chases Tabitha all the way up onto the roof!

"The Shadow Of The Cat" is a great movie for people who love cats and despise stupid greedy people, and I think that was the intention!