EYE OF THE CAT (1969)

Wylie (Michael Sarrazin) is in the middle of making love to his casual girlfriend (whom we hear referred to only as "Poor Dear") when Kassia (Gayle Hunnicut) barges into the bedroom and demands that Wylie come with her. Wylie, apparently a decadent playboy, thinks this is just another kinky come-on (it’s the 60s, you know) and he leaves with Kassia. It turns out that Kassia is the hairdresser for his rich Aunt Danny (Eleanor Parker) and she needs him for a nefarious plan: Danny, an invalid who sleeps in an oxygen tent due to advanced emphysema, is close to dying and has left her fortune to her dozens of cats which swarm about the house at will. But Kassia knows that, if her wayward nephew Wylie came home, Danny would change the will and leave everything to Wylie. The plan is to clean shaggy Wylie up, send him to his aunt, and have her change the will, after which Kassia will kill Aunt Danny and split the estate with Wylie. And indeed, Danny is ecstatic to see Wylie again. But there are at least a couple of obstacles: the presence of Wylie's brother Luke (Tim Henry) who has been Danny's caretaker for years, and Wylie's intense cat phobia which can send him into cataleptic shock.

Though this is an enjoyable psychological thriller which has a couple of fun plot twists up its sleeve, there are so many plotholes and ambiguities that trying to make sense of the plot is truly frustrating. Why has Wylie stayed away so long? Why does Kassia assume that Wylie will split his inheritance with her? What's up with Poor Dear and that kinky opening scene? (Poor Dear returns briefly to be the catalyst for a vigorous catfight which is completely extraneous to the narrative.) Why isn't Luke more upset about being pushed aside for the prodigal nephew? Why does the sickly Aunt Danny look so healthy? And is she actually flirting with Wylie? How on earth does all this happen in basically a day and a half? To be fair, at least one of those questions is answered by a big plot twist near the end (which is a good one, but also opens a new can of plot questions which are not answered). The acting is problematic, with too much underplaying (perhaps because of the underwritten script). Michael Sarrazin (pictured with Hunnicut above) is one of my favorite 60s-70s actors (he's great in THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?) and he's all jazzed up and sexy here, but he way overdoes the cat phobia, especially in the first such scene when an orange cat stalks him in Kassia's salon. Hunnicut practically sleepwalks through her role, and Parker is OK, though as I noted, too robust to seem truly vulnerable. Tim Henry (at right) rivals Sarrazin for comely looks and is fine as the brother, but also seems at times to not be sure of how to play a scene so he underplays it.

The pluses: the 60s vibe, the San Francisco setting, a couple of nicely done Hitchcockian scenes, especially the one in which Parker's wheelchair malfunctions and she goes zipping backwards down a long hillside street. As Stephen Larson points out in his review at Blu-ray.com, the characters are all locked into relationships of dominance and submission, and it's interesting to watch those play out, though again due to the script, we don’t really get enough information about their backgrounds (especially Luke's and Kassia's) to allow us to undo all the knots. The beefcake element is nice—both Sarrazin and Henry get shirtless scenes—and the cats are used effectively, though there is a worrisome scene early on in which Sarrazin frantically tosses a cat into a space heater (I hope the ASPCA was on hand for the filming of that moment). The conclusion is satisfying but the very last scene tosses one last ambiguous moment our way. The Blu-ray includes as an extra the TV print which cut out some sexiness and, oddly, reworked the last section of the movie to feature only one cat at the climax instead of the dozens that return in the theatrical film. [Blu-ray]