Mini Monsters: Cat's Eye (1985)

There were two reasons I checked out Stephen King's anthology horror flick Cat's Eye. First off, this horror magazine I read called HorrorHound wrote about it in their latest issue which was anthology themed. A quick note on HH before moving on. I love this mag, but the lack of editing drives me CRAZY. As an editor myself and a big fan of upstart magazines (that's definitely not an easy mountain to climb right now), I want the writing to be as crisp and consistent as possible to it won't turn off people like me who are driven crazy by such things. As an example, depending on what kind of style guide you use, you either italicize a movie title or put it in quotes. Sometimes they italicize, sometimes they do quotes and sometimes they do both! I don't know if this bothers you normal folks, but it bugs me. I guess it's not all that bad because I'm still reading it, but I'd love to create a style guide for them.

The other reason I checked Cat's Eye out is because Rickey thought that it might be the mini monster movie I remember from my childhood, but still haven't been able to track down. And that lack of success has continued with Cat's Eye even though it does have a gremlin monster of some kind and the bouncing ball. But, I had a blast watching it so who cares?

So did my cat Milo. Before getting into the movie review, here's a few pics I took of him watching the cat (the connector of the three stories) run away from a dog. He loves watching animals on TV.







So, the three stories are like this. First, James Woods joins this crazy-strict mob-run program that helps you quit smoking on the threat of harm to your loved ones. It's over the top and has great moments of dark humor and I didn't see the end coming. The second story focuses on a rich guy torturing the guy who plans to run away with the rich guy's wife by making him walk around the outside of a skyscraper. And the final, my personal favorite, brings the cat into the hero role as he defends a little girl (Drew Barrymore) from a mini monster, even though her mom swears the cat is causing all the problems.

What I like best about the final segment is the practical effects they used to convey the mini monster running around Barrymore's bedroom. I didn't see any behind-the-scenes stuff, but it looks like the dressed a regular dude up in the costume and then put him in a room where everything was built huge to make him look tiny. Just think about how much fun that would be? I would love to do something like that. The whole idea made me smile every time they showed those scenes. Here's a video of the scene. If you're worried about spoilers you might want to skip it, but if you think anyone, even Stephen King would kill Drew Barrymore, you're nuts. Just saying.



Aside from the FX, though, all three stories are really solid and fun while still feeling scary. They play out like EC horror stories, which I love in all their non-comic forms (the few I've read, read really slow to me, but the art is awesome). So, I may not have found my mini monster, but I checked another movie off in my copy of Creature Features book