Welcome to another installment of B-movie Battlefield. This time we look at two black and white classics: Cat Girl and The Undead. In almost every other article I read about Cat Gir’ they compared it to Cat People which was a 1940′s movie, they said that Cat Girl is essentially the same movie and that it wasn’t as good. They also said that Cat Girl was just a reworked plot and that it just wasn’t up to par with Cat People. Well, I don’t really care. I’m not going to do that comparison and I think that every movie no matter how similar to another movie deserves to stand on its own merit. Even though a plot may be similar there is much more to a movie than plot. One thing people forget is the script must be interpreted by people, people who then decide what the author was thinking at the time. Then the actors do their best to portray that image. Sometimes the portrayal is done successfully and other times to the detriment of society. That being said, sometimes a rip off is a rip off and no amount of interpretation can change that. Today I let Cat Girl stand on its own two… er… four feet. Welcome to the battlefield. Let the battle begin.
Cat Girl is about the curse of the Brandt family. The curse has been handed down from generation to generation and now its time for the last of their line to inherit it. Leonora and her friends are headed to her uncle’s house for a reason that is never really disclosed. She has been invited and they seem to be drinking the questions away before they arrive. When Leonora has to deal with the horrible truth, will she be able to contain the evil that is passed down to her or will she stalk her prey and eventually devour every last bit of her friends’ intestines like a quaint amuse-bouche from the Rainbow Room. The Undead is about two Psychic researchers who pay a prostitute to come back to their lab and undergo a strange hypnotic technique designed to regress her so far into her past that she begins to live the life of someone she previously was. The previous life comes in the form of an accused witch. The prostitute in her helps her break free from the shackles in the tower of doom, but the naive medieval girl in her helps her make the right decision. Will the researchers, the prostitute and the good witch she eventually meets be able to sort this whole affair out or will it be the guillotine where our heroine’s “head will nuzzle in her own breast once they lop it off”?
First category is effects. This is very difficult this time because both movies did not rely too heavily on effects to make their very cheesy point. Cat Girl had some of the worst transformation effects I think that I have ever witnessed in a movie. I have never seen such a brutal “cat” transformation in all the time I have been watching movies. I remember in college, we made a movie which had a certain blood effect. It was really cheesy but nothing compared to this. The transformation was kept out of focus, of course and had a striking resemblance to the costume worn in Donnie Darko (see it!). The hand transformation was, without a doubt, a poorly made glove with patches of hair on it. I laughed so hard I think that I nearly ruptured my spleen. Normally this would not bode well for a movie but in this circumstance its absolute gold. The Undead had many, many effects. From Witches and Imps disappearing and reappearing as various animal incarnations to a strange fire effect reminiscent of, but predating, Adobe After Effects. Both movies used what they had very successfully, however, in the end The Undead must rise victorious for its overuse of the transformations and strange medieval outfits.
Normally the next section would be kill scenes, unfortunately both of the movies had very little to show. The Undead had one very brief very off-screen kill scene. It was very strange that a movie about witches, knights, prostitutes and researchers would be called The Undead. I’m still trying to figure out why they called it that. The fact is, Cat Girl hit the nail right on the head with its title. It’s a story about a Cat Girl. I think that I will award a point to Cat Girl for not being extremely misleading, and making me watch a movie that is promising undead people and gives me untalented actors. Another reason I want to award Cat Girl the point for this section is for the gratuitous use of the stuffed leopard. There are a few scenes where people got mauled. It was a pleasant bloodless maul that ended with off screen screaming but every time the actor would stand and open his or her arms and a giant obviously stuffed leopard would be heaved at him or her. I can’t help but wonder if the crew was laughing uncontrollably or if they thought to themselves “This is so unbelievably real!”
Lastly we have the one liner. Even though I’m still very bitter that there were no zombies in The Undead, I still have to admit that it had some of the most memorable lines I have heard in sometime. There was a graveyard caretaker and digger who was referred to as Smokey. Was that his name? I don’t really know. He would sing these songs and I had to rewind (isn’t this some kind of VHS term? What’s it called when you do it on a DVD player?) in order to hear them again. I have included one for your pleasure below. If you want more, well I guess you’re going to have to go and see the movie aren’t you. Oh ya, the prostitute was pretty funny too….
Doctor: Do you have any problems getting up in the morning?
Prostitute: No not at all, I get up in the afternoon.
Grave Digger:
Hickory dickery horse
My guest is dead of course
The clock struck 2
My guest is turning blue,
With little to no remorse.
Cat Girl had a very poor showing in this category, not one single leopard skin or feline related joke. Here’s a line this movie had to offer.
What is this place a training school for ghouls?
We find ourselves at the end of another installment of B-Movie Battlefield. The winner this week is The Undead, despite its obvious name problems. The Cat Girl took itself way too serious. The acting was great; it’s just too bad the studio didn’t have the money to back it up. Next week I will be doing a different kind of battlefield review. I will be looking at one of the worst movies of all time. This movie is so bad that people recoil in horror at the sound of its name. Not the Dungeons and Dragons movie. That movie is beyond anything I can handle. I will be reviewing the complete mess that is known as Masters of the Universe. There is no doubt in my mind I will need patience and require heavy sedation. Wish me luck. Till the next time we meet I leave you with the immortal words of Jabba the Hut ” Jee panwa waffmula chone patogga che lickmoomoo.” (I enjoy cake and pie for dessert.).
Benton Sartore on 
Merin on 
Evan Henry on 
Mouse on 
