El gato con botas

Whoa! I have seen some bizarre movies, but Roberto Rodríguez's adaptation of Charles Perrault's story is in a class all by itself! "El gato con botas" comes across as one giant acid trip. Exaggerated acting, sped-up scenes, and occasional singing make this one of the weirdest movies out there. While watching it I made a few comments like the characters on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" make; Mike and the 'bots would've had a field day with this movie.

I assume that the characters are supposed to represent the detachment between the social classes in Mexico - the royals and aristocracy are white while the peasants are swarthy - but seriously, the whole movie comes across as a joke. Nevertheless, they probably had fun filming it, and you'll probably enjoy making MST3K-style cracks at it. The challenge will be finding a copy.

Like many Baby Boomers, I saw this picture in a Children's Matinee in the sixties. It was bad then, it's bad now. However, I enjoy it for the nostalgia of the times, namely my recollections of seeing family oriented movies on a large screen.

I did some research on K. Gordon Murray and a competing company, Childhood Productions run by Barry Yellin. Both men tried to corner the kiddie matinee venue in the sixties. As the market began to dry up, they both formed secondary companies that released X-rated porno films! Quite a product line, wasn't it? Murray got into serious tax troubles with the IRS in the seventies. They literally hounded him to death! He died of a heart attack while they were investigating him. The IRS seized his assets including the 35mm color dupe negatives he was using to strike the release prints. For all I know, they may still have them. AIP purchased syndication rights from both Murray and Yellin before they folded and distributed 16mm copies on television. The rights eventually returned to the foreign production companies.

Richard W. Haines, author "Technicolor Movies"

A Mexican retelling of the Puss 'n' Boots fairytale, this is handled quite reasonably with a sufficient budget to do the milieu justice. If you can get over the main character's costume then I don't think you'll have much problem with the rest of it. Plenty of colourful costumes, scheming characters and cheesy action scenes are the highlight here, with a random giant rooster thrown in for comedy value. Expect THE SINGING RINGING TREE-style quality and you'll "get" it.

A great movie but not by itself, just a godd memory of my grand grand mother playing the role of the Lady of time

Constantly bombarded at this film are turkey awards for bad costuming and poor dubbing. As we all know, poor dubbing is not the filmmaker's fault, because this film was made to be seen in Spanish. To find heavy fault with the costumes is to ignore the films strong merits as an excellent satire. I find this film reminiscent of Jean Renoir's _The Golden Coach_. This is because the film relocates the story from France to eighteenth-century Mexico, which is not merely a plot contrivance to fit with the setting, is an essential element to this version of the story, much like in Renoir's film, dealing with imperialism outside the main plot. The king is a very caucasian-looking Spanish lord, and the division between the wealthy Spaniards and the poor Mexicans is quite strong. To its credit, however, the film does not take sides, but rather makes mock-worthy characters on both sides, and allows the camera to linger on little details that develop the characters, extending most of the scenes slightly longer than they would be in a high concept American film. The film's ordeal with the talking chicken is a particularly notewothy hegemonic attack masquerading as a children's entertainment. New elements such as this, not created by Perrault, are skillfully integrated into the whole of the film, and it is quite a taut, comic masterpiece. If only they had spent more on the costuming, though the special effect of Puss running on sped-up film was a charming effect, even if it most likely was done to save money. A literate script, fine acting, lavish score, and effective camerawork allow me to forgive the shabby costumes. I only wish I had a subtitled version, so as not to contend with the atrociously inept dubbing, courtesy of kiddie exploitationer K. Gordon Murray. This is probably the film version of the story most worth seeing, because it innovates the story to its own agenda, rather than trying to be a literal adaptation of the story, of which there are plenty.