Director: John Gilling
Writer: George Baxt
Stars: André Morell, Barbara Shelley, William Lucas
1 Hour, 19 Minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/33JQfLJ
Synopsis
An older woman, Ella, reads Poe’s “The Raven” aloud to her cat. We see footsteps as a man enters the house downstairs. He enters the room, and she says, “I’m done Walter.” And the man then beats her to death while her cat watches. Actually, there are two men and a woman involved here, and the three of them work together to dispose of the body.
Credits roll.
We watch the two men bury the body, and the cat watches as well.
Two days later, the police question Walter, Ella’s husband, who was one of the killers. Ella has disappeared, but no one knows why. Walter’s very worried, as Ella was under a doctor’s care. He points out to the inspector that Tabitha the cat isn’t eating properly.
The butler, Andrew, and maid, Clara, try to console Walter. The cat won’t go near any of them. “She knows,” Walter points out. Walter chases Tabitha into the cellar, where he tries to kill her, but he panics when he sees rats and has an apparent heart attack.
Ella’s niece, Beth, comes to visit and take care of Walter. When she arrives, she finds Andrew with a big scar on his face; the cat attacked while he was napping. Walter explains that Ella has cut Beth out of her will, but that he’ll take care of it as soon as he’s well. Tabitha comes in and likes Beth, but when Clara comes in, the cat freaks out and hides.
The police inspector comes around, and he inspects foul play in the disappearance of Ella. Walter pulls out Ella’s new will and shows it to the inspector. Walter is just completely obsessed with the cat, and the outsiders are starting to think he may be losing his mind.
Three more relatives, Edgar, Jacob, and Louise arrive. These three are already conspiring to weasel some money out of Walter. They’re pigs already, hoping that Aunt Ella is dead and trash-talking Beth.
Clara throws a knife at Beth, thinking she was the cat. Clara’s hysterical, and Beth cannot fathom why everyone is so concerned about the cat. Walter knows why the three new arrivals are here, and he doesn’t care; they start making plans, while the cat watches through the skylight. He needs them to find Ella’s original will so he can destroy it, and they also need to kill Tabitha the cat.
Beth tells Michael, her fiancee, everything. He thinks they’re afraid of the cat because the cat knows what happened to Ella. His guesses are exactly what we’ve seen happen.
They all chase after the cat, and Andrew the butler get sucked into some quicksand while the cat watches. Next, the cat jumps on Clara, knocking her down the stairs to her death. Walter is the only one left who really knows what happened.
Beth and Michael find evidence that someone has been searching for something in the attic. The three cousins start getting the idea that Walter is the weak link in this scheme. Jacob leaves Walter’s window open, and Tabitha crawls in during the night. Walter sees the cat on his bed and dies of fright.
When the inspector shows up, Edgar jumps right in there with a will showing that Walter left him everything. Louise knows what Jacob did, and she’s getting nervous too; she wants out. Jacob tells Edgar that something needs to be done about Beth, and soon.
Michael figures everything out and tells Beth and the inspector all of it, but there’s no real evidence. Jacob hears the cat upstairs and follows her out onto the roof. Of course, he falls to his death. Meanwhile, upstairs, Edgar finds the original will, but also stops to hunt the cat. The rotten old attic collapses on top of him, and he’s dead too.
The inspector finds the will, leaving everything to Beth, so that gets resolved easily. Then Tabitha shows up, and everyone follows her out into the woods to Ella’s secret grave. Beth decides to move away and sells the house, and the cat moves in with the new occupants.
Commentary
This was black and white, and the only DVDs I could find were region 2. We ended up watching a really grainy version of this from Archive.org, and it was clearly a VHS recording off someone’s television.
From the beginning, the three murderers were obsessed with tracking the cat. Why bother? Yes, the cat knows everything, but who is the cat really going to tell? Until people started dying, their terror was really silly. Even then, the deaths of Edgar and Jacob were pretty contrived and unrealistic.
Still, the movie had a cat as the hero, so it’s got that going for it. If you can actually find a good copy of the film somewhere, I would recommend it, as it’s simply one of the forgotten Hammer films.