| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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EYE OF THE CAT
Rating: 
USA. 1969.
Director – David Lowell Rich, Screenplay – Joseph Stefano, Producers – Philip Hazelton & Bernard Schwartz, Photography – Ellsworth Fredericks & Russell Metty, Music – Lalo Schifrin, Art Direction – William D. De Cinces & Alexander Golitzen. Production Company – Universal.
Cast:
Michael Sarrazin (Wylie), Gayle Hunicutt (Cassia Lancaster), Eleanor Parker (Aunt Danny), Tim Henry (Luke), Laurence Naismith (Dr Mills)
Plot: Hairdresser Cassia Lancaster searches out a derelict, Wylie, and takes him home and cleans him up. She is the hairdresser of his rich Aunt Danny, a wealthy widow. Cassia has learnt that unless Wylie, Danny’s favourite nephew, returns to claim his inheritance it will all go to a cat home. Together they concoct a plan to kill Aunt Danny off and split the money. But when he returns, Wylie has not counted on Aunt Danny’s dozens of cats, which he has a pathological fear of.
Eye of the Cat comes with a screenplay by Joseph Stefano, who was then best known as having written the screen adaptation of Psycho (1960). As with the rest of Josef Stefano’s work, Eye of the Cat offers good evidence that the success of Psycho was due more to Alfred Hitchcock and original novelist Robert Bloch than Stefano’s contributions. Stefano did produce the great The Outer Limits tv series (1963-5), but more tellingly was his other work like the script for The Kindred (1986) and the dire Swamp Thing tv series (1991).
Eye of the Cat begins on a series of improbable contrivances and soon falls into familiar What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) batty-aunt thriller plotting and winds through some muddled character interplay before ending on an even more improbably contrived climax. Characterization is poor, with the actors given little in the way of psychological motivation – Luke and Danny simply hate each other and Danny simply likes Wylie, with no other reasons ever given.
Eye of the Cat is considerably balanced out by David Lowell Rich’s direction. Rich opens the film with some intriguingly effective split-screen work and builds throughout to a tense climax. The cameramen have a strong eye for modern architecture and particularly the San Francisco locations. David Lowell Rich was mostly a tv director and directed genre tv movies like The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973) and Satan’s School for Girls (1976). Rich’s only other major theatrical release was Airport ‘79 – The Concorde (1979).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1990
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