![]() Hissing and pawing and leaping and battling, General really sells the urgency and terror of having to contend with this supernatural nightly visitor. It’s a ridiculous concept, but it’s surprisingly unsettling, in part because the cats playing General (there were apparently twelve) are so damn good. That one involves him trying to keep a young Drew Barrymore safe from a malevolent troll at night, even as her parents keep trying to get rid of the cat. This Stephen King-scripted thriller is made up of three distinct stories, with a sprightly little tabby named General providing the framing device and connecting the three tales, even though he really only takes center-stage in the third. As is standard practice, a number of stand-ins were used for some of the tabby’s specific tasks - in case Scarface was “not in the mood or too upset for one reason or another to act to his full capabilities,” according to his trainer. But chief among the feline actors is an orange tabby (played by a cat named Scarface) who seems to get electrocuted early on but eventually comes back, judgmental and vengeful. This out-of-control, so-bad-it’s-good horror film - about a couple of nephews and a beautician trying to kill a rich old cat lady - is positively drowning in cats, and they play a key role in the movie’s climax as well. Ted Nude-gent, the star of Austin Powers. But once you know the backstory, it’s hard to enjoy any of it. That said, the animal actors in the film do incredible work, even in mundane situations. None of these have ever been substantiated, but it’s hard not to watch either version of the film, which includes animals in remarkably dangerous situations, and not suspect that something was amiss. But most importantly, serious allegations of animal cruelty have hounded the production for decades, including reports of 20 kittens being killed. release to make it both family-friendly and to enhance the role of the dog in the story. For starters, Milo and Otis originated as a longer, darker Japanese film called Koneko Monogatari: The Adventures of Chatran (which was a massive box-office hit in its home country in 1986) and was recut extensively for its U.S. This is a tough one, for a number of reasons. Milo, The Adventures of Milo and Otis (1989) There are also two insanely gruesome animatronic hairless man-eating mutant kittens that show up at the end, but the less said about them the better.įew movies have captured the judgmental stare of a cat as effectively as this adulterous thriller, in which Lana Turner and Anthony Quinn murder her husband, whose loyal Siamese cat becomes a kind of silent witness to their crime - and also gets one truly gnarly cat-jump-scare.Ģ2. The black cat is appropriately unnerving in its glares, and does an excellent job of hissing and carving its way out of holes. Romero and Dario Argento puts new spins on two Edgar Allan Poe tales, the second of them being an excellent variation on the much-filmed “The Black Cat.” In it, Harvey Keitel plays a sadistic, beret-wearing crime scene photographer who has it in for the stray cat his girlfriend has taken in. This horror movie co-directed by George A. It’s not a showy part, but the hairless sphynx that keeps showing up in an apartment belonging to the lovelorn title character in this moody little drama, eventually effectively adopting her (instead of the other way around), is one impressively transformative creature, somehow going from mild narrative annoyance to adorable companion over the course of the film. Bonus points go to this movie for not depicting a hairless cat as some sort of weirdo or creepy conduit to the paranormal. Here they are, the 25 greatest cat performances of all time. Admittedly, it often takes a multitude of cat actors to make one truly great movie cat, but still, it’s a joy to behold when it all comes together. ![]() (There are no actual cats in Cats, however, so maybe they’re smarter than we realize.) This also makes it that much more impressive when we do see cats onscreen - real cats, not CGI or animatronic ones - giving compelling performances. “A cat,” as Judi Dench reminds us in Cats, “is not a dog.” So while the history of movies is filled with dog performers - there’s even a n award at Cannes given out for canine actors - it’s often harder to find cats acting onscreen, given their unruliness, independence, and, well, small brains. This list was originally published in 2019 and has been updated by the Vulture Animal Bureau to celebrate the release of Strays, a new canine comedy that had us in the mood to celebrate film animals of all sorts. ![]()
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