A 1000 Cats?!

If there's a better way to end a month devoted to vertically challenged villains than with a 63 minute movie about human-eating cats, then I'm living my life wrong.

Quick Plot: A wealthy sadist flies a helicopter, picks up chicks, takes them to his secluded mansion, serves them brandy in comically oversized glasses, shags them in a variety of locations on his property, shows off his collection of severed heads, kills them, feeds their parts to his menagerie of domestic short-haired cats, and repeats the process.

Obviously, this is the greatest film ever put to screen.

(NOTE: Some of this review might have been written by other members of my household)

Beginning with its title--which can kind of be read as Night of a One Thousand Cats, which is adorably awkward--this is something special. Not 'good' by any conventional definition. The bulk of your film involves a man with a perm (genre stalwart Hugo Stiglitz, and yes, even Tarantino saluted him in Inglorious Basterds) in a helicopter. That's about 60% of its VERY brief running time.

But the rest involves man-eating cats.

Sometimes, there are SLOW MOTION cats. 

Often, there EXTREME ZOOMS.

And even more EXTREME CLOSE-UPS.

LOTS of EXTREME CLOSEUPS

There are GIANT GLASSES.

A mansion DECORATED WITH STUFFED BEARS AND JARRED HEADS.

And, uh, THIS:

Look, this is a terrible piece of cinema. But it's the rare piece of cinema that involves a whole lot of man-eating cats. So for that, huzzah. Huzzah to us all.

High Points

Cats. Lots of them.

Low Points

Cats, probably lots of them, most likely experienced less than ASPCA friendly treatment on this set. I have no proof of this, save for the fact that the film includes multiple moments where our villain hurls his feline costars at each other or occasionally, the camera. Considering the only place the budget seems to show up is in gasoline for the helicopter, I just can't imagine the producers doled out extra cash for a wrangler

Lessons Learned
Your a 1000 cats might hate you, but you can always count on the soft touch of your stuffed polar bear

Never beat your boss in chess. You’ll probably be rewarded by being pushed into a den of man-eating cats

Any man who longs to put you in a crystal cage is generally not long-term material

Great parenting probably doesn't begin with leaving your six-year-old daughter home alone while you take off in a helicopter to bang a millionaire with a den of killer cats

Rent/Bury/Buy

Night of (a) 1000 Cats is a dreadful excuse for a movie. But it also has a lot of cats. 5 out of 4 paws it is!

That about ties it up for this round of The Shortening. Need a little more little villains in your reading? Allow me to direct you onward to some dear blogging pals who took up the challenge.

Over yonder From the Depths of DVD Hell, blogger and podcasting superstar Elwood Jones took a trip to the desert to tackle one of my favorites, 1974's trippy Phase IV. It has less bell bottoms than Empire of the Ants, but it's still pretty darn gnarly. Head on over!

For a whole smorgasbord of short goodness, Chris Hewson, the keeper of Not This Time, Nayland Smith, has been busy as a deadly bee covering an eclectic mix of fun-size goodies, including:

Brains that won't die!

Candles totaling 16!

Clubs filled with breakfast!

Annabelle dolls!

Devil dogs!

Ludlowian demons!

Stranges!

and most importantly, Cathy's Curse! Cathy's Curse! All day long, CATHY'S CURSE!

GO GET IT ALL!

Not Your Average Sperm Donor

Based on its premise, I assumed Demon Seed was a kind of “Julie Christie gets raped and impregnated by a supercomputer” sorta flick. Something along the lines of the “there’s a little Native American medicine man growing on my neck!” absurdity of The Manitou. 

It’s actually really serious.

For someone who genuinely DIGS the kind of movies about, you know, Tony Curtis dancing in wizard garb and petite Native American muscle men shooting lasers, this is a slight disappointment.

Quick Plot: Dr. Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver) Is putting the finishing touches on Proteus 4, an advanced computer along the lines of Jeopardy!’s Watson. 

Back home, he’s about to move out of his techno paradise from his therapist wife Susan, played with all the typical class and grandeur of Julie Christie. The pair seem to still be in love, but the death of their daughter from leukemia and Alex’s increasing coldness and work obsession have driven a rift that calls for a trial separation.

Relax folks: Demon Seed isn’t Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf via The Sims.

Although now that I said that, I would LOVE to see a Who’s Afraid of Virginia Sims? 

Anyway, Susan is left alone to be cared for by the butler software (named Alfred, a cute touch). Before you can gasp some British colloquialism, Proteus 4 manages to infect the home system, locking down the estate and holding the lovely Susan prisoner…

To make computer babies.

Based on a Dean Koontz novel I haven’t read, Demon Seed flirts with some incredibly disturbing concepts. The idea of Susan essentially being raped—even if the actual impregnation is never taken sexually—and forced to bear someone else’s child is truly horrifying. No matter where your politics might fall, I think anyone would agree that what Proteus forces upon Susan—that is, giving birth to a completely new hybrid species--is wrong. It’s a violation of her right not just as a woman, but as a human being in control of her own body.

Unfortunately, Demon Seed doesn’t quite have enough confidence or care in the deeper implications of its premise to be truly interesting or thought-provoking. Sure, we get a groovy death scene involving a big techno-cube-thing and an excess of laser shooting, but most of the deeper questions seem to be skirted in favor of a more emotional, yet somehow emptier ending. It’s a shame, even if part of the end result calls to mind a mating of Chucky with Bicentennial Man. 

My point is, there's a fascinating film inside Demon Seed, one that flirts with ideas about reproductive rights, evolution, and the moral costs of technological advancement. I wish the film stayed on that course.

High Points

Remember that brilliant scene in Wayne’s World 2, where Mike Myers pleads with the camera to replace a bit role player with a better actor? Seeing an actress of Julie Christie’s caliber in the type of genre movie that on paper might seem silly easily elevates the material

Low Points

The aforementioned third act, that seems to lose its philosophical ambitions in favor of easier character-based closure

Lessons Learned

7:40 AM is the optimum time for morning fuel ingestion

Getting knocked up by a supercomputer can best be compared to dropping acid or watching a screensaver on loop

Never trust a computer that can’t remember how you drink your coffee

The Winning Line

“I have not had time to brainwash you, so listen carefully.”

Makes perfect sense to me!

Rent/Bury/Buy

Demon Seed falls in an odd place for me: it’s far better than any computer-impregnates-Julie-Christie movie should be, but it ultimately misses the mark on what could have been something utterly new and thought-provoking. That being said, it remains a curious taste of intellectual ‘70s sci-fi horror, similar in vein to the unique Phase IV. Sadly, the DVD is devoid of extras, a shame since this is clearly a film that merits discussion. Ah well. That’s what comment threads were made for.

Let Us ALL Welcome Our Insect Overlords

What’s shorter than an ant? A flea I suppose, but fleas are dog-eating jerks without any redeeming factors (other than inspiring long ago plagues that can occasionally breed good film material). 

But let’s get back to ants, those ubiquitous, hard-working, architecture-loving, slave-holding monarchists. When I put out the call for recommendations that suited The Shortening, I got some peachy picks. Today’s entry comes courtesy of Trever over at the fine film blog Kentucky Fried Popcorn, who pointed me towards 1974’s sci-fi oddball Phase IV.

Quick Plot: Something strange is happening in the cosmos, and though experts predicted everything from climate change to earthquakes, the only real effects seem to be felt in ant colonies. Our narrator explains how those six-legged soldiers of different species have been holding international conferences to communicate, something "ordinary ants" just don't do.

This might sound dry and scientific, and while much of Phase IV is, I shouldn't go any further before explaining how we actually see this unfold. Director Saul Bass (better known as a famed graphic designer who created title sequences for Psycho, The Man With the Golden Arm, and much more) works with actual nature footage to detail the development of the ants, with extreme closeups on a rainbow of little guys sitting in a circle and nodding their antennae at one another. It's kind of adorable.

Also, pretty darn impressive. It's impossible to watch Phase IV without wondering how some of the footage was gathered and when you see the massive ant army funeral complete with perfectly placed lines of tiny corpses surrounded by their mourners, you'll see what I mean. The biggest shame of Phase IV is that the film doesn't get a single DVD extra. Considering both the plot science and behind-the-scenes mystery, it's one of the most frustrating DVD releases I've seen in recent years.

But back to The empire of the ants! (but not, you know, The Empire of the Ants). Their behavior sparks the interest of one Dr. Ernest Hubbs (Nigel Davenport), an entomologist, and his mathematician assistant James (our narrator, played by Michael Murphy). The pair head to the Arizona desert to investigate from a big scary Epcot Center-like facility while southwestern ants build 2001-ish monoliths and eventually, drive a family out of their home. 

The fleeing farmers find Hubbs' digs just as the scientists release a deadly pesticide into the air with the hopes of wiping out the approaching ants. All the humans--save for a pretty and bland young woman named Kendra--crumble to their death covered in a yellow dust. 

Oddly enough, this doesn’t upset Kendra nearly as much as seeing her horse attacked by ants. Remember that ‘this’ refers to her family dying painfully from contaminated air released by the scientists she’s now bunking with, but you know...we’re all individuals.

Except the ants, who now seem to be operating under a hive mind. James is tasked with uncracking their code of communication while Hubbs becomes dangerously obsessed with their case, refusing to leave their not-so-secure bunker even after he’s bitten in a way that swells his fist into the size of volleyball. Kendra, meanwhile, walks around looking spooked until she has a mysterious conversation with a spunky escapee.

Said fugitive ant is, well, as awesome as an ant could be. We’re talking Honey I Shrunk the Kids awesome, only in a less “I’m Going To Help Children” way and more “Let’s Eff These Humans UP!” kind of style. The little ant that could--let’s call her Cindy, just cause--has some great adventures in the lab. While the menfolk are out doing scientific things like send a painful sound pitch over the desert, Cindy watches her big sister attempt to chew through the power cord only to be thwarted by a guard praying mantis. 

Cindy, however, is a smart cookie (eater). The little lass succeeds in pulling the praying mantis onto a live wire, setting the security guardette on fire and silencing the signal. 

Isn’t that cute?

Phase IV is a strange film, and I mean that in the best of ways. Although its premise and time should put it squarely in the Nature Fights Back subgenre, it’s far headier and more ambitious than something like the goofy (but amazing) Frogs or Day of the Animals. In fact, it’s far more appropriate to put it on a double bill with the similarly smarter-than-its-peers The Incredible Shrinking Man. Both films explore the relationship of man to his world, more specifically, how that relationship is altered when one of the two finds some sort of new awareness. Phase IV is actually more subtle about this, leaving most of the philosophical conclusions up to us. It’s pretty amazing how far some advanced micro-camerawork of the natural world coupled with an ethereal score can take the audience.

High Points

Though this might turn off some viewers, the lack of human melodrama helps to keep Phase IV’s tone pointedly clinical. Trust me, this is a good thing.

Low Points

Phase IV is such a strange experiment that apparently would have been even stranger if Bass had his stamp on the final cut. Word on the Internet Super Highway has it that Bass had originally planned a surreal montage to close things out, something that might have been gnarly but tragically, the lazy DVD release is bare bones of that or ANYTHING discussing this weird little gem

Lessons Learned

People get killed sometimes

The best kinds of games are serious


Ants are amazing creatures and we should do whatever they tell us. WHATEVER THEY TELL US!!!

Inevitable ‘I Am Seven’ Realization

“What does it mean? A circle...with a dot?” our hero wonders with full earnestness. Please excuse my second grade medical diagnosis that duh, dude's got a cootie shot

Rent/Bury/Buy

Phase IV is a different kind of film, a smart sci-fi with an ambitious script (by Mayo Simon) and genuinely unique approach. Some viewers might be put off by the film’s cold style, but I found it refreshingly different. The DVD nudity makes it more a rental than a buy, but raise six glasses with tiny arms to the hopes that it might eventually get its due treatment. Like a hard-working colonist eating poison for her queen, it deserves better.