My Review of Cat's Eye (1985)

 

Written by Stephen King 

Directed by Lewis Teague

Sally Ann: "Polly got in one good peck before that cat killed her." Good for Polly!

Hugh: "I certainly never realized that Polly had such a big pecker."

For the remainder of this year and every once in a while, I'm going to try and watch/review from 1985. I've done two in the last month and I found this one the other day when looking for something to watch.

Of course, it's a Stephen King adaptation but it's one where he's adapted it himself with his own script and added a new story into the mix. The link to these stories being a cat who would later be called General and a girl (Drew Barrymore). 

As for the stories themselves, there's three of them and they're a bit of mixed bag. None of them are awful but I do think it's the last one that worked the best out of the ones chosen for this adaptation.

The first story, Quitters, Inc focused on Dick Morrison (James Woods) desperately trying to quit smoking. He consulted a company named Quitters in order to do so and they resorted to extreme measures to curb his smoking and later his weight gain. Let's just say they didn't mind harming family members in order to get Dick to play ball. The cat was kept as an experiment before it escaped.

Moving on to the second story, there was The Ledge. The cat ended up as a pet for crime boss Cressner (Kenneth McMillan) who wanted to kill Johnny Norris (Robert Hays) for sleeping with his wife. Cressner had to make it to a series of mind games, which eventually gave Johnny the upper hand and brought about Cressner's downfall. It's the weakest story in the trilogy but it's decent enough.

The last story, General was the biggest focus on the cat. It was named General and taken in by Amanda (Drew Barrymore). Unfortunately, Amanda's mother didn't like the cat and blamed it for the death of the family bird. Of course, it turned to be a troll responsible for terrorising the family and General ended up being taken in permanently by the family after killing the troll.

- The first two stories were taken from Stephen King's Night Shift while the last one was written for the movie.

- The studio told Lewis Teague to cut out a prologue explaining the cat's motivation.

- Standout music: Sting's Every Breath You Take.

- Chronology: Quitters Inc took place in New York City, The Ledge took place in Atlantic City, New Jersey and General took place in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Cat's Eye might not be a classic adaptation but it's a fairly enjoyable look at three interconnected stories with a feline protagonist. The last story's the best of the bunch.

Rating: 7 out of 10