Cat’s Eye is a weird movie, but that’s part of what makes it so endearing. Of the Stephen King adaptations I watched over and over again as a kid. In a weird way, it’s only gotten better as I’ve gotten older. As a child, I had a fascination/crippling fear of trolls as a child, so I have vivid memories of this unsung anthology.
The first installment in Cat’s Eye, “The Ledge,” is frightening in its simplicity. It’s about a guy who’s forced to step out of the window of a high-rise apartment building and crawl on the ledge for the entire length of the building in order to earn his right to live. It’s an unexpected role for Robert Hayes post-Airplane, but that’s part of what makes it endearing. Even if it doesn’t always nail the tension of the story upon which it is based, this segment still gets the job done.
The first vignette is followed by “Quitters, Inc.” which is easily one of the scariest stories in Night Shift. It’s a tale of addiction, originally written at a time when Stephen King was right in the thick of his drug and alcohol habits. The story focuses on a company that will do whatever it takes to get you to stop smoking, from torturing animals to threatening to kill your family. It hinges on the performance of James Woods, who is so believably desperate and terrified.
I think the thing that makes Cat’s Eye such a bizarre anthology is that the first two segments, while they have their weird flourishes, are more or less grounded in reality. They’re what your non-horror loving friends would call “psychological thrillers.” The monsters are all completely human. All of that does absolutely nothing to prepare you for the final segment being about a cat fighting a troll to save a little girl.
I have to wonder what the intent was there. Maybe not having any kind of supernatural element in the first two segments would make the troll seem like a much more powerful adversary for the cat to overcome. After all, the girl is (somehow) calling to this cat the whole movie, begging for his help. He’s racing to save her and just keeps getting caught in what would in any other movie be wacky hijinx, but in Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye are pants-shittingly dreadful situations.
It’s these little narrative choices that are so out of left field that make Cat’s Eye such a weird anthology, but they’re also what wind up making it so memorable. Psychic Drew Barrymore (maybe?) cat vs. troll, these bizarre choices are all over the place and most of them originate right in Stephen King’s script. Even he seemed to be having fun with just making this as goofy as possible. And it works. Despite the scale and the cast, Cat’s Eye winds up feeling like what would have happened had Empire Pictures ever made a King adaptation.
As a King anthology, though, I think the most amazing thing is how clearly and confidently it separates itself from Creepshow. Once again, this is the author adapting his stories for the big screen in a series of diverse shorts and yet the two movies could not be more different.
This even goes out of its way to beat you over the head with its King connections, and still it feels like no other adaptation before or since. Not only do we have a Christine cameo, but it’s spelled out for us just in case with the bumper sticker “I am Christine!” Then we’ve got a whole chase sequence with Cujo, a reference that’s even more appropriate given Lewis Teague directed both Cujo and Cat’s Eye.
For an effort that’s built on winks and nods to other bits of King material, it’s amazing that Cat’s Eye feels as individual as it does. It’s weird and quirky, sometimes incredibly dark, and you never know exactly where the tone is going to go next. That leads it to not quite connect with some viewers, and I understand that. But I think that’s ultimately what makes it such a fun roller coaster ride of a movie. It’s never entirely one thing. And at the same time, it is. There’s such a singular focus on the wraparound and building it toward a showdown with a troll in Drew Barrymore’s bedroom. And if we can believe those stakes, we can believe anything.
Anthologies tend to fall into a trap of being a collection of various shorts from various voices, often leading to a lack of cohesion. Cat’s Eye and Creepshow both avoid that pitfall, which is impressive. That’s something that only a handful of more recent anthologies have been able to do particularly well.
Cat’s Eye is quirky and bizarre and sometimes just as stupid as it appears to be at the onset. But even through all of that, there’s more to it than meets the, well, eye.
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