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The Night of a Thousand Cats

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The Night of a Thousand Cats (1974)

November. 01,1974
|
3.9
|
R
| Horror
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Millionaire playboy Hugo flies around Acapulco in his private helicopter to pick up sexy young women. He whisks them away to his secluded old castle, where he wines and dines them. With the aid of his bald, mute little helper, Dorgo, he kills his dates, keeping their heads in a crystal cage and feeding their chopped up body parts to his 1,000-strong army of bloodthirsty, flesh hungry cats.

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Reviews

Hellen
1974/11/01

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

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SpuffyWeb
1974/11/02

Sadly Over-hyped

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Jonah Abbott
1974/11/03

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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Roxie
1974/11/04

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

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stairmaster
1974/11/05

The moment I saw "Night of 1000 Cats" in the bargain bin of my local Wal-mart, I was perplexed. Why was such a promising looking movie being sold in so degrading a fashion? Out of curiosity, I bought it on impulse, and let me tell you, "Cats" is worth every penny of its price, and more so.The plot follows a young playboy billionaire named Hugo, who flies around what may or may not be a Mexican city in his helicopter seducing beautiful women and the occasional little girl. Hugo is so charming, he can seduce women without even having a conversation with them, all he needs is his helicopter and his winning smile. But there's a catch, for Hugo is not truly a Casanova, he is more of a CATSanova, for he is the owner of 1000 bloodthirsty cats, and once he is satisfied with his women, he feeds them to these voracious felines.And now for my review. "Night of 1000 Cats" is truly a film masterpiece, and I am shocked at the low ratings this film has garnered on this otherwise esteemed site. Those who gave this a low rating should go back to watching the sellout, brain-dead pap that Hollywood normally pumps out. I suppose, however, that most people can not appreciate this movie as the pure work of art that it is. It is the Mona Lisa of film, and it distresses me that people's tastes have deteriorated so much.Hugo, or as I like to call him, the Catsanova (the reason I rated this as a 9 instead of a 10 was because I feel Rene Cardona Jr. really missed a great opportunity to use this brilliant play on words in the movie) is one of the most interesting characters in cinematic history. We never really know much about the character. He apparently has no job, and like all other characters in this movie, he rarely speaks (a brilliant minimalistic decision on the part of the director). We are led to assume his Catsanovic ways all began after his mute Mongolian butler killed one of his girlfriends. Tragically, he took the wrong path after this, and decided to buy 1000 cats so that he could feed women to them. This was truly a tragic, yet natural decision that I think many other men in his position would take, myself included admittedly. We can see the Catsanova's anger and internal anguish occasionally when he randomly tosses a nearby cat over a 12 foot tall cage wall and later when he drowns a cat in his swimming pool. A foolish viewer would claim these scenes were pointless and didn't make sense, but they would be dead wrong, much like the Catsanova's women friends.The direction in this movie is impeccable. You can really understand the movie's symbolism when, during a sex scene, the camera zooms in quickly, dramatically, and repeatedly into the faces of stuffed rabbits, bears, owls, and mooses the Catsanova keeps in his bedroom. This likely symbolizes the Catsanova's descent into the natural animal instinct to feed his sexual partners to cats. Another cool trick the director pulls is adjusting the focus until everything gets blurry. You can tell that Rene Cardona Jr. was very inventive, as no other director is talented enough to bring a shot from clearness into unfocused mystery. Another compliment I have to give Cardona is his reuse of footage. In the ten to twenty minute helicopter seduction sequence for example, Cardona demonstrates incredible efficiency by reusing the same few shots over and over. Overall, "Night of 1000 Cats" is a must see movie, and will change your life. The movie has a very important moral: "If you become rich, avoid the temptation to feed women to flesh- eating cats."9 out of 10

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EyeAskance
1974/11/06

Eccentric tycoon ladies' man uses his private helicopter to prowl female rooftop sunbathers. Once he gets them to his crumbling stone mansion for a dinner date, he sexes them up before adding them to his "collection"(a row of glass jars containing pickled human heads...the victims' other remains are fed to his pit full of ravenous kitties). This is actually a semi-stylish junkyard horror outing with a few effective sequences. The story, however, is rather convoluted and comic-bookish...more discerning horror fans may find the goings-on a bit juvenile. That said, I still maintain that this is worth a look, especially if morally unsound oddities are your bag. With a bit less restraint in bloodshed and boob-shots, this could have been near-classic stuff.5.5/10

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tilapia
1974/11/07

Night of a 1000 Cats was not the masterpiece of Mexican exploitation I expected it to be, but is still a solid little gem of low budget filmmaking. Hey, René Cardona Jr. is directing it, and Hugo Stiglitz plays the lead, and thats all I needed anyway. As usual Hunky Hugo plays a rich playboy womanizer, but in this film he is a little more psycho than usual. He lures women to his old gothic mansion, makes sweet love and kills them. He feeds his hungry cats with their bodies, but preserves their heads and adds them to his "collection". No reason is given for Hugo's deviant behavior and his "minimal face expression" approach to acting certanly isn't helping us understand the character. We do get ordinary "I want you to stay with me forever. FOREVER" -clichés thrown in our faces, but they don't make much sense since Hugo seems to be a well-adjusted fellow with no social problems. The other problem I had with "1000 Cats" is the same one that another commentator pointed out: it's very hard to separate Hugo's women, since they all look pretty much alike and all share the same (minimal) personality. The film's constantly moves in and out of flashback, which only adds to the confusion. So, here we have an underwritten, underplayed (but hunky!) character killing what seems like the same woman over and over again. The characters in the film just doesn't work, (except for Hugo's mute butler Dorgo, the mad monk. Right on!). The film could have been slightly faster paced too.So, what DOES work? First of all, this is a René Cardona Jr.-flick and it is my firm belief that everyone of his films are worth watching, at least once. His films always have a certain "feel" to them, that I can't explain but enjoy very much. They all have that little extra something that seperates them from similiar (some say identical, but what do they know?) films. Although low budget productions, he always manages to squeeze the best out of his pesetas and present a good looking, well edited and charmy product that delivers the goods, whatever they might be. "1000 Cats" is no exception. In many aspects, it's not what it shows, but what it doesn't show that makes it work. Sure the characters are flat, and the story doesn't make sense, but at least it's everybody and everything is nice to look at, fairly fast paced, well crafted and directed. Just imagine how awful it COULD have been if none of those components would have been there.Maybe I'm in a forgiving mode, but:6/10

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bloodemurder
1974/11/08

This movie was recommended to me by an ardent lover of the sick and twisted. I thought that the worst was given away too early, and the film does get caught up in the tedious and seemingly unlikely hunt for new victims. Yet, the film is brief, and does offer enough consistency in characters to allow the genre fan to dispense with realistic expectations. It's not a bad psycho-killer flick - it's horrificly bad.

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