Movie Review: The Shadow of the Cat (1961)

The film stars Andre Morell, Barbara Shelley, William Lucas, Conrad Phillips and Vanda Godsell.

Despite getting a late start, my oldest daughter and I had a chance to have our weekly movie night and, since it is Halloween, I told her she could pick out a black and white horror movie of her choice. The one she picked was “The Shadow of the Cat.” 

I wasn’t sure what to think of this movie when we first started watching it because the premise was one that would either prove to be really unique or extremely stupid. As it turns out, it fell into the former category.

This is a film I think many cat lovers would love to watch because the furry star really did manage to be much more entertaining than I expected her to be. I loved how she practically drove the husband’s criminal family insane before finally taking things up a notch and getting her final revenge, starting with the butler and progressing through every other conspirator, outsmarting them at every turn. Of course, she also received some help from the fact they didn’t really trust each other all that much either.

One thing I wasn’t a big fan of was the way the filmmakers kept trying to show scenes through the cat’s eyes. While I can understand why they would try to do that and will give them credit for trying to be unique, the slightly out of focus scenes just didn’t work for me and I really don’t think they added a whole lot to the actual plot. 

I also thought the movie would have been slightly better had they kept some element of mystery to it, such as keeping what the family was searching for a secret. However, I suspect, even if they would have tried to do that, it probably still would have been easy enough to figure out.

It didn’t turn out to be a horror film like I had hoped. However, it was still a very entertaining movie and one I would recommend, especially if you like cats.

My Grade: A