This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. There are a lot of horror movies out there, but as a genre, horror is still looked down upon by some mainstream critics and moviegoers. It doesn’t help that, admittedly, there are so few quality horror movies made but, like comedy, it’s a very difficult and subjective genre. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some recommendations for scary movies to help you celebrate Shocktober.
Night 7: Anthology Horror Night
A Trio of Terror
Cat’s Eye (1985)
Stephen King’s Cat’s
Eye is a not-so-scary but interesting horror anthology written by King
himself. The first two segments are based on short stories from the collection Night Shift and the third King wrote
specifically for the movie. A nameless stray cat loosely connects the three
stories; in its wanderings it encounters main characters of the first two
stories but plays a much larger role in the final story.
In the first story, based on Quitters, Inc., James Woods plays a man who gets himself in way
over his head when he signs up with a mysterious treatment center called
Quitters, Inc. to quit smoking. The man who runs the clinic lays out cigarettes
on his desk and beats and smashes them screaming at Woods that he hates
cigarettes. Then he shows Woods a small room with a steel floor that becomes
electrified and they watch as the cat jumps like crazy while Twist and
Shout plays. The company man explains to Woods that if he smokes one cigarette his
wife will be put in the room. A second cigarette and his daughter gets put in
the room. After the third cigarette something far more hideous will happen to
his wife. Quitter’s, Inc. employees will be monitoring Woods at all times no
matter where he is. Woods thinks the Quitter’s Inc. boss was just exaggerating
until he finds traces of someone having been in his house in the middle of the
night. Everyone looks suspicious to Woods after that, but his urge to smoke is
ever present…
The second story, based on The Ledge, finds Robert Hays as a down on his luck tennis player
who is forced at gunpoint to walk along the ledge of a high rise penthouse. The
man forcing Hays to walk the ledge is the rich and sadistic husband of the
woman Hays was planning to run away with. This is the most basic and least
complex of the three segments, though none of the vignettes are very complex
stories. The Ledge plays on the fear of
heights, and the much more instinctive fear of falling and dying. The rich
husband taunts Hays from the windows, throws things at him, and at one point
turns a firehose on him. The cat is picked up by the husband after it
inadvertently wins a bet for him by not getting run over as it crosses a busy
street, but when it gets the chance the cat flees the posh high rise building
and ends up on a train to North Carolina where the third story takes place.
In the third segment the stray cat is found and adopted by
young Drew Barrymore and given a name, General. Her mother wants the cat gone,
and her father tells her myths about cats stealing baby’s breath while they
sleep. Some creature is trying to steel her breath, but it is not the cat, it
is the demonic gremlin that lives in a hole in a wall of her bedroom.
Thought Cat’s Eye
is a horror movie and written by Stephen King, the content and tone of each
story is along the lines of classic Twilight Zone episodes. The first two stories are thrillers that have no
supernatural elements. They scare through suspense. The third story, about the
cat and the gremlin, isn’t scary but is entertaining. I think it is the kind of
not-too-scary horror story that older kids can watch; it is about a pet saving its child
owner from a monster her parents don’t believe is real, after all. The gremlin
has scary eyes and sharp teeth but wears a jester’s hat with bells and makes
comical noises.
The blue screen effects do not hold up very well. Quitters, Inc. which relies the least on
effects fairs best in that respect. The effects in The Ledge don’t hold up, if they ever did, but if you have a fear
of heights the nature of the story will still provide some suspense. All of the
attempts of the old man to throw Robert Hays off balance get a bit goofy after
a while. Cat's Eye attempts to build the cat’s character and backstory; at the
beginning of the movie it sees little Drew Barrymore’s face appear in a store
window asking for help. The cat is not very expressive however, but I’m willing
to accept that it knows it has a mission. Cat’s
Eye is a good horror anthology to take a break from blood and serious
scares with some entertaining suspense.
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