Cat's Eye (Universal) (1985)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Main Menu Introduction Main Menu Audio & Animation Scene Selection Anim & Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1985
Running Time	90:22 (Case: 94)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Lewis Teague
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Drew Barrymore James Woods Alan King Kenneth McMillan Robert Hays Candy Clark James Naughton Tony Munafo Court Miller Russell Horton Patricia Benson Mary D'Arcy James Rebhorn
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Alan Silvestri

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Portuguese	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    While tripped out in another drug delirium, the master of terror (or is it horror? I keep forgetting those taglines), Stephen King himself, cooked up this script, based on two short stories from his collection Graveyard Shift and one original story done for the script. Anybody who has read that little tome will know it to contain many other beloved King tales, such as Children Of The Corn, The Lawnmower Man and Sometimes They Come Back. Indeed, there are many good tales in that collection, and anybody who thinks otherwise is obviously not a fan and should be looking elsewhere.

    So what is there to say about Cat’s Eye? Basically, this is three tales interconnected by the journey of a cat. First up there is Quitters Inc., the story of family man Mr Morrison (James Woods) who goes to a very unconventional place to help people quit smoking and has his life turned into a living hell. Secondly, there is The Ledge, the tale of a washed-up tennis player who is forced to walk around the ledge of a hotel by a rich mobster after the tennis player steals his wife. And finally there is The General, which involves a cat saving a little girl (Drew Barrymore) from a tiny goblin that comes in the night to take children’s souls. The three stories are linked together by a cat that traverses from New York to Atlantic City to North Carolina.

    Much like Creepshow or Creepshow 2, these tales are more comic than horrifying, and so riddled with little in-jokes that you can’t help wear a smile most of the time. For example, did anybody notice that the movie Morrison was watching during Quitters Inc. was David Cronenberg’s adaptation of The Dead Zone, rumoured to be King’s favourite adaptation of any of his novels, including the adaptation done for Misery? Or the book the little girl’s mother is reading in bed? None other than Pet Semetary.

    But the big question is, how does Cat’s Eye hold up nearly twenty years on? Well, it has dated pretty badly in some respects. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t terrible. It has several charms which endear it even this far down the track, and the first two stories aren’t bad adaptations. But it’s no award winner, and never was in its day, and the third tale is just so appallingly schmaltzy that it really gets to you. The best story by far is Quitters Inc. due to some fabulously neurotic acting by James Woods, though the second one was very nicely done and if you have a fear of heights, well ... The cheap soundtrack and slightly campy overtones don’t help it out too much and the persistent tongue-in-cheek tone really makes it hard to get frightened when you’re too busy chuckling.

    Still, for its day this show was pretty good, and I am sure that it will serve to scare the d***ens out of eight year olds at a sleepover without containing anything too nasty. But as far as frightening goes it’s got nothing on the bathroom scene from Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining, and if one scene can eclipse a whole movie, well, I guess that puts it in perspective for you. If you’re all grown up now, do yourselves a favour and read one of his books instead – I’d suggest one of his classics like IT or The Stand. Those ones are actually creepy.

Video

    Presented in 2.35:1, 16x9 enhanced, this is the original aspect ratio.

    The picture quality is overall just a touch soft, but other than that I have very few complaints. The softness counteracts any graininess, and even the dimly lit shots were well defined with great shadow detail.

    Colour is certainly natural and well balanced, but there is none of the intensity that you get out of modern film transfers.

    There are no significant MPEG artefacts, and there is only the faintest of background aliasing and moire effect on grille panels which you may notice if you’re looking for it, but will otherwise slip by unnoticed.

    For a film this old it is surprisingly devoid of film artefacts. In all honesty, this is a remarkably clean print. Aside from some grit around the opening credits, there was nary a stray hair thereafter.

    Subtitles are available in Portuguese. Unless you can speak the language, your guess is as good as mine as to whether they follow the actual dialogue.

    This is a single layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    All we have here is an English 2.0 Dolby Surround track. It’s not bad for what it is, but it’s hardly fabulous either.

    The dialogue is strong and loud and there were no apparent audio sync faults.

    The range isn’t half bad and there was some good bass usage during the music and a couple of the audio FX.

    Sadly, this was a fairly centrally driven track, with no apparent directional cues. It is still a stereo field, but not much creative use was made of it.

    There is no subwoofer use.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus

    All menus are 16x9 enhanced. The main menu has the theme from the film playing in 2.0 Dolby Stereo. The chapter selection menus have about ten seconds of motion footage for each chapter.

    As far as I can tell, the R1 version is largely identical barring the NTSC/PAL format difference and the region coding.

    Cat’s Eye is a fairly dated little horror flick that is really more a comic horror than anything else. It’s not terribly frightening, but it passes a rainy evening away fairly well.

    The video is very good for a film of this era, if a touch soft overall.

    The 2.0 Dolby Surround track gets the job done without being anything special.

    There are no real extras here, not even a trailer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall