Review of Cat's Eye

Stephen King returns to anthology horror after the success of his "Creepshow" collaboration with George A. Romero. This time the stories are less EC Comics and more Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The first tale involves James Woods going to a clinic run by Alan King to help him quit smoking. What he doesn't expect is their extreme methods, which include people constantly spying on him, torturing family members, and people hiding inside his house. Woods is, as always, intense and compelling as the haggard man and brings a lot of a fairly thin story. The second story is about Robert Hays taking a bet from a Las Vegas high roller who he's wronged that he can't make his way all the way around a high rise casino along the narrow ledge. This entry had a nice throwback feel to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Man from the South," which was based upon a Roald Dahl short story about a high roller who bets a desperate gambler he can't light his lighter 10 times in a row or else he has to let the rich man chop off an keep a finger. The third tale is the best and the one that's closest to traditional horror. Drew Barrymore plays a little girl who keeps telling her parents there's a monster living in her wall, but her parents don't believe her, even though there really is a creepy little monster. I think what I liked most about this segment are the Incredible Shrinking Man style of special effects used to animate the tiny monster, particularly when it's a regular-sized actor in costume on a giant set interacting with giant props. Loved that! There's a wraparound story about a stray cat who passes through each story, but it's really not much of a story and the cat doesn't play any role in the other stories until the final one. Apparently there was originally more to the wrap around, but it was cut out of the film. Besides the above named actors, there is also Kenneth McMillan, James Rebhorn, Mike Starr, James Naughton, Charles S. Dutton, and voice artist Frank Welker, who's voiced everything from The Smurfs to Scooby Doo to Futurama to Aladin and the Lion King. Welker is credited as Special Vocal Effects, which I'm guessing is the creepy little monster living in the wall. Also of note is that the film was photographed Jack Cardiff, who has shot everything from "The African Queen" to "The Red Shoes" to "Rambo," so the film does look gorgeous. Overall, this isn't the best King film adaptation, but it's far from the worse, and falls somewhere in the slightly above average range.