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CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT
This lunatic late sixties obscurity, a hippified take on THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, is hardly a buried treasure. It is fun, though, an unforgettably whacked-out wallow in gore and sleaze!
The Package
BASKET CASE
director and trash movie buff Frank Henenlotter had a hand in dredging up this
1968 “class-sick,” which was commercially released in the nineties by
Something Weird Video. Starring boxing legend Jake La Motta (RAGING BULL
himself), CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT didn’t meet with much success during its
initial run. The credited director was “Eve” (apparently a pseudonym for Herb
Stanley), who appears to have filmed a horror fest and then padded it with soft
core fuck scenes shot months (if not years) after the fact.
The Story
At a sex
party a bunch of bored hippies wait for their pal Buddy, who’s supposed to be
bringing narcotics. But when Buddy finally arrives he’s sporting a nasty leg
wound attained during a recent scuffle with a crazy woman. This leads to a
bizarre tale.
It seems that days earlier Buddy was invited to the cluttered pad of
Virginia, the “Psycho Cat” of the title (she lost her mind as a child, when her
brother tossed her pet cat off a building). There he joins Charles, an actor,
and a wrestler known only as The Champ. Virginia gets right to the point: she
knows the three men have all committed murder at some point, and so offers to be
their avenging angel by hunting them through New York City. To sweeten the deal
she offers each of them $100,000 if they can survive the hunt.
The three dudes unwisely accept Virginia’s offer, and she gets busy. She
helps arrange for Charles to get a plumb part in a prominent play, and after
it’s over she stabs him to death. She also makes a series of obscene phone
calls to the Champ, and then, in a mock bull fight, spears him in his own
backyard.
She saves Buddy for last, shooting him in the neck with an
arrow--appropriately after he’s just shot himself up with heroin! Virginia’s
final bow, alas, is in a nuthouse, after her father and brother find her three
human “trophies” hanging in a closet.
The Direction
Those seeking a well made movie had best look elsewhere, as this one is
clumsy, cluttered and convoluted from start to finish. You need look no farther
than the lame opening scenes, which bludgeon us with a lot of plodding
sexploitation inserts, and set up the main story in clumsy fashion by first
having the hero chased around by the Psycho Cat and then flashing back to his
previous exploits--all the while incorporating the POVs of several supporting
characters, many of whom have nothing to do with the story at hand.
However, the film only lasts 69 minutes, and its charm is in its
raggedness. Any lover of bizarre cinema will thrill to the ultra-wide angle
lenses and wildly off-kilter camera angles director Herb Stanley employs during
the title character’s psychotic freak-outs, and the outrageous overacting of
Eileen Lord as that character. In fact, I’d venture to say that the film’s two
major setpieces--the murder of the Champ and its delirious aftermath that has
Virginia bowing to an imaginary audience, and the latter’s deranged unveiling of
her grisly trophies to her appalled family--are great filmmaking by any
standard.
Vital Statistics
CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT (a.k.a. THREE LOVES
OF A PSYCHO CAT)
Something Weird Video
Director: “Eve” (Herb Stanley)
Producer: Herb Stanley
Screenplay: Bill Boyd
Cast: Eileen Lord, Jake La
Motta, Arlene Lorrance, Frank Geraci, Ed Gerrabrandt, Dick Lord, Rita Bennett