Movie of the Week: The Cat Creature

Frank Lucas (Kent Smith), an antiquities appraiser, is in a California mansion of a recently deceased client to finish an audit of the estate’s art and artifacts.  In a cellar room he finds a vast collection of Egyptian relics including a sarcophagus that holds a mummy with a cat amulet hung around its neck. While Frank leaves the cellar to get some equipment, a thief who was lying in wait appears and steals the amulet.  Frank returns and is quickly dispatched by a killer black house cat.  Police Detective Marco (Stuart Whitman) is aided in his investigation by Professor Roger Edmonds (David Hedison The Fly) who is an archeologist with an interest in Egyptology.  They learn that the mummy was a priestess of Bast who was believed to have the ability to turn into a cat and had achieved immortality by drinking the blood of humans. Meanwhile, the thief attempts to sell the item to Hester Black (Gale Sondergaard), the curator of a black magic shop, but she refuses, suspecting the items are stolen.  When Hester’s clerk is also murdered by a cat, she hires Rena Carter (Meredith Baxter) as a replacement.  Roger and Marco, in search for the thief that stole the amulet, interview Hester and Roger falls instantly in love with Rena.  The two begin a romance.  But as the body count rises, not all is as it appears, and Marco and Roger have to come to terms that what they are dealing with is a supernatural entity that can shapeshift into a cat.  Can the duo survive their investigation and save Hester and Rena, or will they perish? Watch and find out!

Although the men who star in the movie are adequate, there isn’t anything really special about them, the real stars are the women of this film.  Gale Sondergaard’s Hester Black has a mysterious otherworldly charm tempered with a kind of darkness. She knows her own power and worth and takes a bit of joy when she gets the upper hand on someone. Originally the part of Rena was written specifically for Diahann Carroll, but by the time the script was done she was no longer under contract with the network, and so the script was rewritten for Meredith Baxter (Family Ties) who does a wonderful job as the innocent, yet not so innocent Rena who falls in love with Roger yet has a secret of her own that she is keeping from him.

This is one of those made for television movies that was just fun to watch in the 70s and would be a prime candidate for a potential update if done correctly, keeping the serious tone and storyline.  At its heart it is a version of the Mummy mythos where an ancient artifact wasn’t cursed, but was holding at bay an evil, and the removal of that artifact unleashes it on an unsuspecting world.  The story does not have global ramifications like some of the current Mummy movies but is much more about personal journey and survival. The story is well conceived and flows well.  Writer Robert Bloch who is best known for writing the novel Psycho, that the movie of the same name is based on, does a great job keeping the dialogue grounded and real even when talking about supernatural forces.  The production value is adequate, especially for a early 70s made for television movie using shadows and practical lighting tricks to insinuate magical influences.  The ending scene is especially well done, with a great costume piece and clever camera work.  Overall, it is just a fun mummy movie that was thoroughly enjoyable to watch.