The Big Cat

The movie's a quality outdoor production with engaging characters, solid script, and compelling scenery. So how did they get the cougar to go through his involved paces on apparent cue. The trainer or someone should get special credit since it's the cat's roaming that sparks the plot.

Spindly city lad McCallister arrives in Utah high country complete with suitcase and city suit. The question is what to make of him since the native woodsmen are a tough lot, from the men to the boys. But tough as they are, they can't seem to take out the predatory cat that's taking their stock. Turns out that McCallister's related to grouchy Foster, but how he'll manage to fit in with his city ways is the big question. Good thing that sweet little malt-shop Garner's there to flounce her dress at him. I like the way the thoughtful screenplay sets events in Depression era 1930's. Among other things, it explains why McCallister moves from ravaged city to high country unknown.

There's lots of outdoor action with no obvious sets. Note how noir director Karlson zeros in with close-ups to catch fleeting emotional moments, especially with Foster. Plus the chest butting between a blustering Foster and Tucker seems authentic as heck. But especially, there's that surprise about two-thirds way through that I sure wasn't expecting. I guess my only gripe amounts to a cougar without claws since Spike the dog is left unbloodied following his many tussles with the big cat. I guess the predator was understandably de-clawed before filming. Anyhow, I hope they gave the two critters a good payday for all their good work.

All in all, I can see the movie being produced as a boy's matinée. After all horse and dog movies were very popular during the latter '40's. Nonetheless, the film's quality is really much better than most. In my book, the result happily qualifies as a guys-of-all-ages creation that's as entertaining now as it was in '49.

Operating with a limited in number but generally talented group of eight actors, director Phil Karlson, soon to be known for his essays into noir, here creates an engrossing adventure film set in 1933 depression and drought wracked southern Utah, and incorporates many of the elements which later will prove vital to his deserved reputation as an important narrator of urban crime. Residents of a small secluded valley are being tormented by a large mountain lion which, due to a shortage of water, has invaded their region to prey upon livestock, and the bounty for the beast of $150 is coveted by two long-feuding neighbours, one of whom, Tom Eggers (Preston Foster) provides a place to live for a city-bred young man (Lon McCallister), the son of the former love of his host and also the nephew of Eggers' rival, Gil Hawks (Forrest Tucker). The well-crafted scenario includes elements of romance, suspense and humour to the basic plot, and a certain darkness of tone has raised the work above most others of its stamp, with crisp editing (Karlson and Harvey Manger) prevailing, and we enjoy particularly fine performances from Foster and McCallister, with a pleasingly large role for veteran character actor Irving Bacon, a standout as a farmer doubling as a preacher.

Young Lon McCallister has trouble making ends meet in depression-era Philadelphia, so he returns to his dead mother's rural hometown. There, he becomes involved with the town folk's soap opera past, and catches the eye of Peggy Ann Garner. Due to drought, a menacing cougar is on the scene, making the outdoors very dangerous for the movie's characters...

There is a lot of fighting, with and without the cougar; but, that's not the film's most interesting feature. More interesting is that the movie features a few "child stars" past their "Hollywood Prime." On hand: Lon McCallister, from 1943's "Stage Door Canteen" and others, Peggy Ann Garner from 1945's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and others, Skip Homeier from 1944's "Tomorrow, the World" and others, and Gene Reynolds from 1938's "Boys Town" and others. Mr. Reynolds won huge fame later, as a producer ("M*A*S*H").

"The Big Cat" and the family dog win big acting honors.

**** The Big Cat (4/49) Phil Karlson ~ Lon McCallister, Peggy Ann Garner, Preston Foster, Forrest Tucker

**SPOILERS** With the great depression and a disastrous drought all the people in this little area of Southern Utah needed was a deadly mountain lion on the loose killing their cattle to make them forget their troubles.Having a $150.00 reward, a lot of money back in 1933, on it's head everyone in the area were out to get the deadly feline but with no success because the lion was always one step, or paw, ahead of them. Into the mix comes young Danny Turner, Lon McCallister, from Philidelphia looking for a job at the Tom Egger place.

Tom, Preston Foster, sent Danny a letter about three months ago about Danny helping him with his work in the tan bark business but since them Tom's tan bark business went kaput. Since there came on the tan bark market a new and cheaper synthetic tan bark that put poor Tom out of business. Danny shocked at Tom's situation, as well as his own, decides to stay with him and help him gun down the killer mountain lion for the reward money. Money that can give Tom a jump start to fill his orders of tan bark and get him, and Danny, back on his feet again.

Meanwhile Tom had been feuding with his neighbor Gil Hawks, Forrest Tucker, for over twenty years a feud that started over Lucy, Gils's, sister, who Tom wanted to marry. The feud got so out of hand that Lucy soon fled east to get away from both her brother Gil and her lover Tom and to keep from ending up dead by getting caught in the crossfire of these two lunatics.

In Philidelphia Lucy met the man that she married and with whom had Danny but she and Tom secretly carried a torch for each other .Now with both his parents dead and no work to be found Danny could only go west to Utah and Tom for work and for someone who would treat his as if he were his own son.

The fighting in the movie between Tom and Gil is so off-the-wall and outrageous that you wonder how they both survived all that time without ending up dead behind bars or in a loony bin. With guns and axes and chains the two were going at it in what seemed like a crazed daily ritual. The appearance of the killer cat was the only thing that kept the two from really going at it and finishing themselves off for good long before the movie ended.

Danny also got the two Hawks boys Jim & Wid, Skip Homeier & Gene Reynolds, mad at him when pretty Doris Cooper, Peggy-Ann Garner, went wild over the young city boy even before she ever laid eyes on him. This showed how desperate Doris was for a normal young man who wasn't part of the crowd that she had to deal with in that part of of state.

Trying to track down the mountain lion Tom shoots a buck for food and after Danny, who couldn't bring himself to gun down the buck, dragged it back to Tom's place but forgot to take Tom's 30/30 rifle that he used to track down the panther. With the deadly cougar picking up the scent and then trying to eat the hanging buck carcass Tom foolishly tries to shoot the cat with a .22 rifle. A .22 is useless against a large wild animal like a mountain lion and Tom gets killed by it when it ambushes him . Danny feeling guilty about Tom's death, since he left the gun that would have done in the cat back in the woods, goes out on his own and finds it's lions lair. With the unexpected help of a member of the hated Hawk family, their dog Spike, Danny has it out with and finally finishes off the elusive and deadly killer.

Just after watching "The Big Cat", I thought to myself....'should I give this one a 5 or a 6?'....but the more and more I thought about it, the more I realized that I WANTED to like the film more....and that I don't think, in hindsight, that it even quite merits a 5.

"The Big Cat" is a coming of age story about a young man from Philadelphia who is trying to live in the west of 1932...but in some ways fails miserably until he ultimately proves himself. Danny (Lon McCallister) is out of place and often makes a nuisance of himself...yet, inexplicably, Tom and Doris (Preston Foster and Peggy Ann Garner) think he's marvelous. It's especially odd with Doris. Perhaps the pickings are slim out in the rural west, but she adores Danny the second she meets him....and it felt like the scriptwriter used this as a plot device to get us to pull for Danny. I, on the other hand, thought he was a bit of a screwup....and was not so impressed by him.

The story is about a cougar who is supposedly huge and very aggressive (the cat they used in the film appeared aggressive though not particularly large). Folks try to shoot it repeatedly without success (why? The cougar was not magical) until eventually the non-violent Danny rises to the occasion.

For me, Danny seemed like a very uncertain and rather wimpy guy and seeing his transformation at the seemed a bit farfetched. Not impossible...but hard to believe. Overall, a film that failed to connect with me....not a bad film but also not a particularly memorable one.