‘Cat’s Eye’ is an underrated Stephen King gem
It’s not ‘Creepshow,’ but it’s a solid anthology
Over the three Halloween seasons that I’ve been watching Stephen King adaptations, anthologies have served as the high and low points. I think the original Creepshow is one of the all-time great Stephen King movies, a frightful and funny collection of stories directed with style by George Romero. I loved it so much that I couldn’t wait to see Creepshow 2 the next year…and discovered that it’s a cheap, shoddy mess. I know Creepshow 3 is held in similarly low esteem — maybe lower — and has no Stephen King connection, so I decided to move on.
Released in 1985, Cat’s Eye is another one of this year’s entries to boast a screenplay by Stephen King, and it has several other King connections – the film’s director, Lewis Teague, previously directed Cujo, and it features a young Drew Barrymore, who just a year earlier had starred in Firestarter.
Those two connections to previous adaptations, along with the opportunity to tackle another movie with a screenplay by the author, made Cat’s Eye an interesting film to consider this Halloween season. I’m also less interested in revisiting the classic King movies – although maybe next year I’ll finally get around to that The Shining/Doctor Sleep Franchise Friday – and this film is one I don’t hear discussed too much. Plus, two of the stories are adaptations of tales I liked in Night Shift, King’s first collection of short stories. Also, it was streaming for free on Max. So, we’ll close this year’s series with this one.
Cat’s Eye is a collection of three short films, the first two of which are based on King short stories and the third is a story created for the screen by King. Its framing device is fairly novel, as it follows a stray cat who wanders in and out of the stories, mystically drawn to a young girl (Barrymore). It actually opens with a fairly clever sequence in which the cat is chased by an angry St. Bernard and narrowly avoids being pancaked by a red Plymouth Fury; later on, a character watches The Dead Zone on TV and asks “who writes this crap?” It’s a tongue-in-cheek Stephen King multiverse – and an opening that the recent documentary King on Screen would try to replicate on a grander scale.
An interesting element of Cat’s Eye is that despite coming from “the master of horror,” following in the footsteps of Creepshow and containing hints of some of King’s more iconic scary stories, only one of the tales here is supernatural. The first two are less horror and more thriller, with a nasty pulp vibe that often feels more like it came from the pen of Richard Bachman than Stephen King.
“Quitters Inc.” is based on one of the most famous stories from that collection. James Woods plays a smoker who turns to a mysterious organization to help him kick the habit. Rather than use hypnotherapy or acupuncture, Dr. Vinny Donatti (I question his medical credentials) uses mob tactics to help his clients quit. And by that, I mean he keeps Woods’ character under constant surveillance and threatens to electrocute his wife and daughter – or worse – if he catches the man with a cigarette.
It’s been a while since I’ve read “Quitters Inc.,” but I remember it being a pretty sinister story. While the idea here is dark – the idea that succumbing to one cigarette could cost you your entire family – there’s a wry sense of humor to the adaptation. Alan King plays Vinny with a wide smile, his friendly face making him somehow more intimidating. And Woods – a fascinating actor until he became a right-wing mouthpiece – has a wiry energy and smarmy humor that leavens the story. He starts as a bit of a smartass and thinks he can talk his way out of it; but Woods has a sweaty intensity as the net begins to tighten and he realizes how caught up he is.
I don’t think the story’s centerpiece – when Woods’ wife is trapped in a room with an electrified floor – is as scary on screen as it was in print; it looks pretty goofy, and something more low key might have been more effective. But there’s a lot of other good stuff peppered throughout this story’s 25 minutes, such as a scene where Woods’ character searches his den for an intruder and finds a mysterious pair of boots in the back of the closet; we’re never quite sure whether they contain feet. A nightmarish sequence where he’s trapped at a party where everyone is smoking and a very young James Rebhorn bullies him into taking a puff is also really well done. The short run time leaves the pacing feeling a bit off – there’s a steady build and then a quick deflation – but the story ends on a macabre button. It’s a solid story.
The next, “The Ledge,” comes from another Night Shift story that has stuck with me for years. Robert Hays plays Johnny, a man having an affair with a mobster’s wife; he’s stolen money from the mafioso and the two plan to run away together. But as he’s heading out, Johnny is abducted by the mob boss’ henchmen and taken to his high-rise apartment. There, the kingpin makes a deal: he’s a betting man, and has a narrow ledge running around the perimeter of the building. If Johnny can navigate the ledge all the way around the building, he’ll be able to keep the money and the girl. If he refuses, there’s not a good ending awaiting him. Johnny reluctantly chooses the ledge.
Like his Airplane! co-star Leslie Nielsen, who had such a memorable role in Creepshow, Hays makes a solid center to this pulp tale; his wide-eyed terror serves him well in the scene where Johnny has to navigate the ledge, putting up with wind gusts, crumbling concrete and a bothersome pigeon. Teague has fun with perspective and heights, and captures the sheer terror of being just five inches from your doom. It’s a tense and squeamish tale, much like the original story, and I only wish Teague and King hadn’t felt the need to interrupt Johnny’s journey by having the mob boss, Cressner, pop out and taunt him or spray him with a hose. While I understand the idea to add an active villain to the story, I think it would be better served if it was largely wordless. Not helping matters is that Kenneth McMillan plays the role with such over-the-top relish that instead of being scary, Cressner is just silly.
The short story version of “The Ledge” ends with a dark gut punch, as Johnny completes his circuit only to find that Cressner has already killed his wife. Johnny kills Cressner’s henchmen and sends the kingpin out for his own walk around the ledge. The movie follows that ending for the most part, but gives a more definitive comeuppance for the villain; it’s a bit more satisfying than what we get on the page, and I think this might be my favorite entry from the movie.
The final story, “General,” in which the cat makes its way to the home of the little girl and helps protect her from a troll living in her walls. Like I said earlier, it’s the only supernatural story of the trio, and it’s a weird shift. The movie turns from two pulp-centric stories to one that’s a bit of a mix of horror and fantasy. It feels like Teague and King may have been inspired by the previous year’s Gremlins, and they have some fun with the giggling, mischievous and murderous monster living in the young girl’s walls.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, at some point, an exec thought about turning “Genera” into a stand-alone feature, but I’m glad this is only a brisk 20 minutes. The shift in tone makes it a bit of a silly closer to the movies, and at 90 minutes, I’m sure it would be exhausting. But as a short entry, it’s kind of fun. Barrymore, of course, was a solid child actor and brings a lot of energy and charm to her role. And the troll design and effects are pretty solid, save for some awkward composite shots. While I wouldn’t call it scary, there’s a fun energy to the way the cat and troll duke it out, and their final fight is a bit of a blast. Plus, I love the cheesy heroic music that plays whenever the cat shows up to save the day (it’s hard to believe that composer Alan Silverstri delivered this cheesy, synth-driven score the same year as his iconic one for Back to the Future). The troll meets a gruesome end, the cat snuggles up with the little girl and the movie ends quickly after.
I can understand why audiences passed up Cat’s Eye in 1985. King was the master of the macabre at that point, and I think he was mostly identified with stories of stark terror and monstrous beasts. This anthology focuses strongly on his pulpier side, which I don’t think was as strongly appreciated at that time, and the one overt bit of horror is sillier and more family-centered. The movie also firmly remains in its PG-13 rating, which perhaps told people it wasn’t as scary as what had come before.
That said, I think the movie is a great deal of fun, and the first two stories in particular allow King’s voice to come out (“The General” could also fit in line with some of his fantasy work; I could see it taking place in a similar universe to his recent novel Fairy Tale). I don’t think it quite captures the gruesome fun of Creepshow, but it feels a piece with some of his lesser-known short tales. It’s one of the more enjoyable movies I’ve discovered in these revisits.
And, that’s it for this year’s Stephen King Halloween entries! I hope you’ve enjoyed them!