Holy shit… Ngai Choi Lam’s The Cat…
Honestly that should (and could) be the entirety of this review, but you need to hear more, believe me…
Author/paranormal scholar Wisely (Waise Lee, Bullet in the Head) writes novels based in part on his exploits… exploits that include an absolute hum-fucking-dinger that includes his pal Li Tung (Lawrence Lau, Bullet in the Head) and his loud-ass neighbors that include a strange girl (Gloria Yip, thankfully not from Bullet in the Head, but instead from another of director Ngai Choi Lam’s features… the absolutely psychotic and spectacular prison splatter-film; Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky) and her black cat, as well as an strange man (Lau Siu-Ming) all of whom move out the next day leaving behind an apartment filled with crumpled newspaper and one set of cat intestines.
Meanwhile… In the sewers, a sentient puddle of what looks to be puke crawls inside the corpse of a transient, re-animates the damn thing, and strolls straight up to a museum where Li-Tung’s neighbors are stealing an artifact. Once there, the corpse expels the creature, now evolved into a cross between a mushroom and the alien from John Carpenter’s The Thing… which naturally goes shithouse on any living thing it can get it’s… flaps (?) upon… but not Li-Tung’s neighbors… (whom Wisely has immediately figured out are aliens… before even having met them… ), as they haul ass in the commotion.
As Wisely’s involvement in this cosmic caper increases, we learn the girl is a princess from another world, and the cat and man, Errol by name, are her protectors from interplanetary assassins that now stalk the Earth!
An absolutely dizzying blend of pulp sci-fi adventure, gore, cat puppets (to be fair, there’s a rather choice dog puppet involved here too), sweat fetish, explosive action, and best of all… plentiful practical creature effects… The Cat is truly all things to everyone… the “everyone” being lovers of completely bat-shit cinema (of which I, and doubtless you, number among).
For nearly an hour and a half your eerie eyeballs will be seared to a crisp (metaphorically… unless you have some sort of ocular disease) by every low-budget trick available (low budget being relatively speaking) utilized to present to us sights you won’t believe… from alien-possessed folks going Terminator among an insane amount of pyrotechnics, a lengthy martial-arts influenced battle between a cat and a dog, and mounds of fleshy monstrous terror that constantly mutates… all of it swirling and bubbling among a narrative that’s as off-kilter as the visuals utilized to bring it to lascivious life… and the cast sells this insanity with aplomb!
If there’s any negative here, it’s that there is a sequence where the cat is trying to exit a car trunk but is “stuck”… and someone is obviously holding that pussy in place, rough as hell (which is weird considering the ample puppet usage throughout the feature).
Special features assembled here include an audio commentary courtesy of HK cinema expert Frank Djeng (which covers elements of the film’s production, as well as the history of the Wisely character), the Japanese cut of the film (which presents a vastly different experience), an interview with writer Gordon Chan, a stills gallery, and The Cat‘s theatrical trailer.
Additionally, if you pick up The Cat in it’s Limited Edition format you receive a spiffy slip case with kick-ass artwork from artist Sean Longmore, a 40 page book chock full of info and images, and a premium art-card!
A one of a kind sci-fi extravaganza, The Cat is a phantasmagoria of practical effects, dicey stunts, and a fevered logic all it’s own!
