Monster of the Day #329

Updated on September 26, 2011 By Ken Begg 22 Comments

“Quick! The Fancy Feast!”

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  • Flangepart

    Uh…anyone else see a picture?

  • I do.

    I have no idea where that’s from, but I feel like I should…

  • Mr. Rational

    Nice kitty. Don’t bite Mr. Rational…

    OT: I just finished my grand project of reading all the B-Masters film reviews. Well, at least all the reviews they have posted on their websites. Well, at least those sites which are currently accessible.

    Nevertheless, even with those qualifiers, I think I may be the only person in history to be able to make such a claim.

  • Since I was always raised with cats in my house from as long as I can remember, I have never feared them. For some reason, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci keep featuring cats in what I assume are frightening situations, at least to them. Plus we have The Uncanny which I saw as a kid and pretty much spent the whole film rooting for the kitties.

    I guess it’s the same effect I get when a snake is shown on-screen in an older movie and I can tell the movie thinks I’m supposed to be creeped out because hey, look! A snake!

    Another no-longer-scary trope includes gorillas which I guess were seen as horrifying monsters in the 1930s and 1940s. So many horror stories and movies from that era feature anthropoid brutes, or apelike demons.

  • Why do I want to say this is from The Kiss? Did The Kiss even have a cat in it?

  • Holy crap, it is The Kiss. I haven’t seen that movie in around twenty years. How the hell did I remember that when I keep forgetting…

    Damn it. What do I keep forgetting?

  • Major nerd points on that one, Cullen. That’s the first one in a while that I thought nobody might get.

  • roger h

    The false “cat scare” is so common that I suppose some film makers think they are being clever by making a cat an actual threat.

    Sandy is right, it doesn’t really work, The false scare is better in most cases (as seen in Alien). In Re-animator, it is oddly funny.

  • Rock Baker

    What’s the matter, Ken? Couldn’t find a monster pic for today so you fell back on this perfectly normal picture of your average house cat?

  • Tork_110

    “So this is like any cat attack.”

  • fish eye no miko

    @Sandy Petersen: I totally hear you about snakes! I really like snakes, and I hate seeing them demonized in media. Being treated as dangerous predators, sure; that’s what they are. But the whole “snake as a symbol of evil” really bugs me.

  • Flangepart

    AH! Now it comes through.

    “Evil the Cat had a sibling named Apocolypse the destroyer. Sadly, he choked on one of his anti-matter hairballs, and that explains the Crab Nebula.”

  • Rock Baker

    Snakes as a symbol of evil works on film because snakes are culturally a symbol for evil, a by-product of the serpent being used to tempt Eve in the Garden of Eden. Most species of snake are certainly dangeorus enough to justify one being (overly) cautious around them, but the symbology of snakes, cats, etc is a cultural issue trenched deep within the public psyche. Sure, there are snakes, spiders, cats, etc that aren’t evil, but they really can’t counter centuries-held gut reaction.

    And despite what many a kiddie cartoon has done to strip the menace out of great apes, the truth is such animals are VERY dangerous. I don’t care what idiocy gets worked into cinematic media, if one sees an ape they should stick by the ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ frame of mind! The same applies to so many other large animals we’ve been conditioned to believe are harmless (elephants, tigers, lions, chimps, bears, whales, sharks, hippos, wolves, etc, etc, etc).

  • Tork — I think the actual line is more like, “Oooh, so it’s just a regular cat, then.”

    That became one of my favorite MS3TK lines ever.

  • fish eye no miko

    @Rock Baker: Oh, I know where the symbology comes from. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

  • Petoht

    Darn it, I would have gotten this one! Curse my upside-down schedule. This is relatively fresh in my mind because I’ve been going through the archives of Good Bad Flicks and he reviewed The Kiss, paying special attention to this demonic little kitty.

  • Flangepart

    Rock: Another reason most snakes are feared is that while small compared to humans, a poisonous snake is not only easy to miss seeing till it fangs you, the poison makes up for its physical weakness.
    Kinda like how a 200lb man with a .450 weatherby can trash a 600lb jungle cat, if he gets off a good shot.
    ‘Force multiplication’, so to speak.

  • Rock Baker

    I think the most dangerous snake around here (or at least the most common dangerous snake) is the copperhead. I literally came inches away from stepping on one this summer, as I stepped over it walking out of the house. I thought I saw some leaves washed up against the stoop out the corner of my eye and looked down to see myself closer to a poisonous animal than I ever want to find myself again. Thank God it was just as startled and we both darted in opposite directions!

  • Rock Baker

    Ken and Tork, I believe the line was actually “So this just like any cat, then?”

  • Kirk

    I own this one on VHS. Slow film, but the escalator scene is worth it.

  • Rock Baker

    I’ve never even heard of The Kiss. Is it really obscure, or did I just miss one?

  • Kirk

    Rock – It’s pretty standard ’80s horror. It’s fairly slow-paced, with a bit of nudity.