The Cat (1992)

Dir. Ngai Choi Lam

Consuming the amount of exploitation films that I do, I find there are starts and lulls in the kinds of trash I’m interested in. It generally goes that I focus on one genre and dig through it until I hit the bottom of the barrel. Zombie, Slasher, Giallo, Cannibal, Killer Kids, Post-Apocalyptic Mad Max Ripoffs. When you watch to many of one category in a row, the subgenre starts to lose its luster, especially once you’re left with only the dregs of what it has to offer. So it’s always exciting to sink teeth into a new genre, to explore some new territory. In this instance, new territory means the Hong Kong genre cinema of the 80’s and 90’s, and if The Cat is any indicator, this new territory is goddamn glorious.

The Cat concerns Wisely*, an adventurer/novelist? investigating the theft of a priceless artifact (dubbed simply, The Octagon) from a museum. He soon discovers the culprits are a young woman, an old man, and a cat, from outer space. The Octagon is apparently the only way they can return to their home planet, but not before they defeat a gelatinous glob monster that can melt people and create evil Body Snatcher style clones of them. If that plot sounds wild then I’m not doing the movie justice because this thing gets completely bonkers. 

The opening of the film is a bit clunky as the first 10-15 minutes focus on Wisely’s friend, Li Tung being kept awake by the loud noises coming from his neighbor’s apartment. His neighbors are, of course, the eponymous Cat and its entourage. The next morning the trio are gone, leaving only trash and cat guts that Li Tung mistakes for human guts, calling the police and prompting Wisely’s entrance into the proceedings. And Li Tung disappears from the film entirely. Wisely’s the protagonist now. And this was greatly confusing because while Wisely does narrate the movie (the opening shows him writing the film’s events), the DVD I watched did not have subtitles for the first few minutes for some reason, so it took me a little while to piece everything together. So Wisely’s on the case now and can’t shake the feeling that The Cat somehow ties into the museum heist (he’s right of course) and borrows a friend’s dog to help. After all, what better way to catch a cat? This leads to one of the film’s best sequences in which the dog chases the cat into a junkyard and corners it, leading to a full on WWF style brawl between the two animals. There’s no other way to describe it. It’s not just biting and scratching. It’s flying around, grappling, and ass-kicking. The cat literally flips the dog over its head, throwing it through the air. 

The Cat escapes, but soon Wisely is united with the alien trio, who refer to the cat as General, and Wisely resolves to help them get home, but not before they can destroy “ the enemy,” the monster that forced them from their home and has chased them to Earth. The monster is pretty awesome. It’s like a cross between the 80’s version of The Blob, the more raw forms of The Thing (Dog-thing, Blair-thing), and maybe a little bit of Biollante. Very fleshy in a disturbingly organic way. There are a couple stand-out sequences with the monster decimating rooms full of people. The practical effects work is pretty good, combining puppetry and some stop motion. There are times when it looks a little too rubbery and the monster’s claymation “final form” doesn’t approach anything resembling convincing, but it is still an awesome sight to behold. It can also reanimate dead bodies by oozing into them (through the magic of reverse motion), kind of like Night of the Creeps (1986) but instead of a slug, it looks like a sentient mass of refried beans. Another plot point sees the main police guy getting killed and cloned by the monster, turning him into a semi-invincible juggernaut who tries to kill our heroes, giving the film shades of The Terminator (1984). One scene shows him buying weapons from a local gang and decimating them with gunfire in close quarters. Lots of great pulpy squib-work, and surprisingly even kind of creepy. Unlike The Terminator’s cold stoicism, this guy is fucking maniacal, grinning and laughing as he mows down these thugs. It’s over the top, but it still got under my skin. The finale is nothing short of spectacular, showing the monster engulfing some sort of community center(?) before a final showdown on the roof. I won’t spoil the particulars, but I’ll just say that it’s a knockout.

The Cat is crazy. It’s energetic, it’s weird, and most of all, it’s fun. It's a blast. The film lovingly borrows elements from other Sci-Fi horror films and turns them into something uniquely...indescribable. No points for subtlety or nuance here, but this Sci-Fi Action/Horror mishmash is immensely entertaining and wholly satisfying as wild genre experience.

*Apparently Wisely is a character originating from a Doc Savage-esque series of pulp adventure novels originating in the 1960’s, spanning 145 books and several film adaptations.