PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Billie Morin This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Leofwine_draca SHADOW OF THE CAT is well known as being a 'forgotten' Hammer Horror, a movie that was unavailable on home video or DVD for many years until it finally came out last month via a UK DVD release. Having just watched it, I can see why it was 'swept under the carpet' so to speak; it turns out to be one of the company's dullest and silliest affairs.The basic template of SHADOW OF THE CAT is one of those 'old dark house' thrillers, which invariably involves hidden treasure and a bunch of ne'er-do-wells who find themselves at the mercy of a lurking menace. Except the menace in this case is nothing more than a cute cat whose antics in evading the various villains soon becomes tiresome. Andre Morell and Barbara Shelley are the ones mired in this mess, although neither are at their best.The film as a whole has a twee and childish feel. The plotting is very slim and even John Gilling's direction can't do much to lift things. Sure, the crisp black and white photography makes the movie look good and the production values are as decent as you'd expect for a Hammer flick, but that doesn't help when the story is so, well, inadequate. I ended up clock watching throughout which is very unusual given that Hammer was and is my favourite film studio of all time and that I typically love the grand Hammer Horrors of old.

Spikeopath The Shadow of the Cat is directed by John Gilling and written by George Baxt. It stars Conrad Phillips, Barbara Shelley, André Morell, Richard Warner, William Lucas and Andrew Crawford. Music is by Mikis Theodorakis and cinematography by Arthur Grant.Tabitha the house cat witnesses her mistress being murdered by her scheming family and sets about enacting revenge...Out of BHP Films, which is basically Hammer Films using an alias due to a technical legality, The Shadow of the Cat is a delightfully eerie entrant in the pantheon of Old Dark House movies.The picture kicks off with the brutal murder of an old dear, the setting a moody mansion full of shadows, murky rooms, rickety floors, nooks and crannies, and this while Tabitha the cat watches intensely. From here we meet the roll call of family and house servants, the majority of whom are nefarious, and as the paranoia builds amongst the guilty, their reasons for dastardly doings evident, Tabitha goes about her cunning assassinations.Of for sure it's bonkers in plotting, but Gilling (The Plague of the Zombies/The Reptile) was a very astute director, and he manages to wring much suspense and unease from the story, whilst he's not shy to play up some humour and even adds some decent shocks into the bargain. Cast are on good form, playing it just the way it should be played, and the Bray Studio surrounding areas once again prove to be a useful location for such horror shenanigans.Aided by Grant's (The Tomb of Ligeia/The Curse of the Werewolf) beautiful black and white photography, Gilling proves masterful at atmosphere. Naturally we have the requisite thunderstorm, but it's the oblique angles and looming shadows that really fill the mood with impending dread. While the use of a stretch screen technique to portray the cat's POV (Catovision?) is a nice trick that works very effectively.It's a hard film to get hold of, but there are decent sources available to view it (the Onyx Media International double DVD with Cat Girl is a good transfer that does justice to the photography). It's still under seen and little known due to its lack of availability. Which is a shame, because for fans of Old Dark House creepers there's good fun to be had here. 8/10

Theo Robertson This owes a lot to both Edgar Allan Poe and Hammer Studios . A man murders his wife with the help of his two servants to claim the inheritance quickly realising her cat Tabitha has witnessed the murder and is bent on revenge . It sounds slightly bonkers and it is but Poe in his short story The Black Cat brought a credibility to a macabre story of revenge . THE SHADOW OF THE CAT is much more in keeping with the spirit of Poe compared to the 1930s Universal film starring Karloff and Lugosi which took the title of Poe's story but absolutely nothing else .Alas SHADOW OF THE CAT is a rather mundane melodrama . Andre Morrell can do no wrong in my opinion and realises what sort of film he's appearing in and acts accordingly - by hamming things up every chance he gets including a laugh inducing scene where he's stuck in a cellar and shrieks like a banshee as he fights off an attack by Tabitha . As for the rest of the cast they're very mundane who have little impact in a film with a cheap feel with a rather uninteresting screenplay featuring a cat on a revenge mission . Maybe they could have got Charles Bronson to play Tabitha ?

HEFILM This Hammer film has a unique story while boasting the typically good to great Hammer assets of editing (which is especially well done this time) and production and of course acting. The copy I saw was a very poor dub of a dub and a good version would rate higher. I'm not sure if this was a Scope movie or not, though many of Hammer's Black and White films were and the full frame version I saw looked cropped. Originally the cat was supposed to be shown only as a shadow, this might have in the long run been more effective, or at least explained the title, though it's the shadow of guilt it still refers too. I can't think of another Hammer film quite like this as far as plot or structure. It starts with a very good longish pre-credit sequence and has typically effective music throughout. Director John Gilling is under-appreciated and this film is unique in his output.It is fast paced, stylish and fun, actor Andre Morell does a great freak out job. It can be a problem with films where most of the characters are bad guys to keep interest, but this group sweats in fear and celebrates their own misdeeds in a way that makes them engaging. You want them to die but you also somehow sympathize with the inevitable cruel nature of their fate.Some nice shots of cat's glowing eyes by the way as well.