A Sombra do Gato

The Shadow of the Cat is directed by John Gilling and written by George Baxt. It stars Conrad Phillips, Barbara Shelley, André Morell, Richard Warner, William Lucas and Andrew Crawford. Music is by Mikis Theodorakis and cinematography by Arthur Grant.

Tabitha the house cat witnesses her mistress being murdered by her scheming family and sets about enacting revenge...

Out of BHP Films, which is basically Hammer Films using an alias due to a technical legality, The Shadow of the Cat is a delightfully eerie entrant in the pantheon of Old Dark House movies.

The picture kicks off with the brutal murder of an old dear, the setting a moody mansion full of shadows, murky rooms, rickety floors, nooks and crannies, and this while Tabitha the cat watches intensely. From here we meet the roll call of family and house servants, the majority of whom are nefarious, and as the paranoia builds amongst the guilty, their reasons for dastardly doings evident, Tabitha goes about her cunning assassinations.

Of for sure it's bonkers in plotting, but Gilling (The Plague of the Zombies/The Reptile) was a very astute director, and he manages to wring much suspense and unease from the story, whilst he's not shy to play up some humour and even adds some decent shocks into the bargain. Cast are on good form, playing it just the way it should be played, and the Bray Studio surrounding areas once again prove to be a useful location for such horror shenanigans.

Aided by Grant's (The Tomb of Ligeia/The Curse of the Werewolf) beautiful black and white photography, Gilling proves masterful at atmosphere. Naturally we have the requisite thunderstorm, but it's the oblique angles and looming shadows that really fill the mood with impending dread. While the use of a stretch screen technique to portray the cat's POV (Catovision?) is a nice trick that works very effectively.

It's a hard film to get hold of, but there are decent sources available to view it (the Onyx Media International double DVD with Cat Girl is a good transfer that does justice to the photography). It's still under seen and little known due to its lack of availability. Which is a shame, because for fans of Old Dark House creepers there's good fun to be had here. 8/10

Although supposedly made under the name of BHP Productions for contractual reasons, there is no doubt that what you are watching is a Hammer film. Everything about it reflects the Hammer trademarks of the era. The lighting, the music, the photography, the use of the exteriors at Bray (Hammer's first and most fruitful home) and the ever-present Black Park (a green lung in urban Slough that Hammer turned into everything from a Swiss mountain stream to a tropical river filled with piranha fish) - nothing is out of place. The plot is typical Grand Guignol - a rich elderly woman is murdered by her relatives for her money. They might get away with it too, except her pet cat takes exception to the plot and decides to exact revenge. While not thought-provoking by any means, the film moves confidently and swiftly along. Director John (Plague of Zombies, The Reptile) Gilling papers enough shocks over the holes in the plot to keep it interesting and the cast (led by Barbara (The Gorgon) Shelley and Andre Morell) do their jobs efficiently and entertainingly. The movie, though, belongs to Tabitha... Oh, and do you get the significance of the widow's reading of Poe's "The Raven" at the start of the film? Creepy stuff!

Shadow of the Cat is a Poe-esquire horror film that focuses on a sinister animal - the domestic cat. The film begins with a reciting of the Edgar Allen Poe poem 'The Raven', and from there we begin to focus on the title animal. There is nothing about this film that officially suggests it has anything to do with Hammer studios, but the feel of the film is very much like Hammer and the fact that John Gilling - the man behind two of the best Hammer horror films, Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile - is the director means that it has something of an affinity with the studio. The plot focuses on the common Gothic horror theme of a family and an inheritance. The family here is the Venable family, and the story starts properly when a rich old woman is murdered by her relatives because they're after her inheritance. The only witness to the crime was the lady's pet cat, and while normally anyone committing murder in this way would get away with it scot-free, this particular cat takes exception to the murder of its owner and sets about exacting its own revenge.

The plot is, of course, pretty far fetched, but it's handled well and John Gilling never lets it descend into the realms of ridiculousness when it comes to people being murdered by the cat. The cat itself looks sinister enough, and while it doesn't have the same menace as, say, the murderous moggy in Lucio Fulci eighties impression of The Black Cat, the acting from the feline side of the cast is mostly fine. The thick Gothic atmosphere is the film's main asset, and John Gilling achieves this through the black and white cinematography as well as the decor of the central location and many of the events that transpire. The film is very short at around seventy five minutes, but this doesn't matter too much as Gilling makes his point and doesn't let too many sub-plots interfere with that. Of course, this sort of story is rarely going to give way to a truly GREAT film, as there isn't enough of it; but the film moves along nicely for the duration, and the events that build up to the ending ensure that the film does what you would expect of it. Overall, I doubt too many people will be disappointed with this and any fan of British horror will want to check it out.

No supernatural creatures in this Hammer film, but a lot of the human cast in The Shadow Of The Cat thinks Tabitha is the feline from hell. Not that they don't deserve what happens to them.

The film opens with Andre Morrell murdering his wife who controls the family fortune and with the connivance of two servants Andrew Crawford and Freda Jackson. The only witness to the event was Tabitha the cat and the sight of the cat gives them guilty consciences.

Other relatives arrive including Barbara Shelley and her fiancé Conrad Phillips and Shelley is the only one that Tabitha behaves with. The others now influenced by Morrell all hate the cat, ascribing all kinds of supernatural behavior. And attempts to trap and kill it result in a whole lot of the cast being eliminated.

This is a good one from Hammer because it relies on the human failings for these people to fail. Tabitha has no powers, she's just smarter than the rest of the humans in the cast.

Cat's got Pussynality.

"Shadow of the Cat" is a modest and often overlooked Hammer horror production, but simultaneously also an underrated and genuinely creepy gem that is guaranteed to deliver a compelling plot, a moody gothic atmosphere, competent performances from a bunch of Hammer regulars and more than a handful of silly but nevertheless sinister murders committed by (or at least initiated by) a vindictive cat named Tabitha! Moments after her beloved heiress Ella Venable read Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" to her, Tabitha the Cat witnesses how poor Ella gets murdered by her husband Walter and two household staff members. The faithful housecat promptly makes it clear that she will avenge her heiress and terrifies the culprits so badly that they must call in the help of more vicious family members. While six (!) people are desperately trying to annihilate the evasive cat, the good-hearted niece Beth begins to suspect that aunt Ella's disappearance and the sudden fear for the otherwise friendly animal might have something to do with a missing testament. Sure, it requires a large dose of "suspension of disbelief" to accept how unnaturally petrified these people are of a simple cat, but George Baxt's screenplay is clever and John Gilling's direction is professional enough for the film to remain suspenseful. Gilling made some of Britain's best and most nightmarish horror films, by the way, like "Plague of the Zombies" and "The Flesh and the Fiends".