Cat’s Eye (1985)

Movie Info

Secondhand smoke leads to secondhand coolness!

Cats can see things others do not and tabby cat has been seeing a girl named Amanda (Drew Barrymore) begging her for help.  As the cat travels, it sees a man named Dick Morrison (James Woods) taking desperate measures to quit smoking…and finding that even quitting can be dangerous.  It witnesses a couple’s torrid affair discovered, and what the gambler husband named Cressner (Kenneth McMillan) offers to the broken tennis pro Johnny Norris (Robert Hays) in exchange for their safety.  In the quest to save the girl, the cat itself will uncover horror to save the girl from the monster that haunts her…all in the cat’s eye!

Directed by Lewis Teague, Cat’s Eye is a horror anthology written by Stephen King.  It features adaptations of two of King’s published stories and one original story.  The film was received to mixed reviews.

I can remember seeing Cat’s Eye the first time on a vacation on cable and liking it.  As a PG-13 movie, it wasn’t the most horrific movie and with Stephen King’s short stories adapted, it comes off as a mini-Creepshow…light.

That must be one great girl

As with all anthologies, the stories can vary in quality.  The first story “Quitter, Inc.” adapts a story originally published in Stephen King’s 1978 short story collection Night Shift and is the more “funny” story of the grouping and my least favorite as a result.  The story doesn’t feel like it has the bite it needs.  James Woods plays his part to the max as the quitter who is caught in trap, and I do like Alan King’s over the top head of Quitter’s Inc.

The second story “The Ledge” was also published in Night Shift in 1978 but was originally published in the July 1978 issue of Penthouse.  The story probably is the strongest of the three stories with a great idea of a test of wills.  It has both the fun and the horror and fear…though who are squeamish about heights will have a double fear imagining themselves in the place of   while Kenneth McMillan is good as the maniacal gambler.

This house has an infestation

The third story “The General” also serves as the framework story.  It is an original story by King and the best looking of the three stories.  Some of the chromakey stuff doesn’t work the best, but I do like the scale perspective shots of the troll/goblin/monster because they give it really humanistic qualities that do amplify its creepiness which wouldn’t have been obtained through claymation or CGI (if that had even been an option when the film was made)…it does leave you wondering what a cat ever did to the mother (Candy Clark) to make her such a cat hater (maybe she encountered one of Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers).

Cat’s Eye isn’t great but it is good to ok.  It is a rather short movie and doesn’t take must investment and fans of King will enjoy seeing a few of his smaller stories brought to life, but the originality of “The General”.  As a moderate success, I am a bit surprised that a second Cat’s Eye never appeared because King has a plethora of stories and a lot could be done at a relatively cheap level of production…but in a world of sequels and remakes, I still wouldn’t count it out.