The Curator of Schlock #316: Night of a 1000 Cats

03 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #316 by Jeff Shuster

Night of a 1000 Cats

Was this the inspiration for Dr. Tongue’s House of Cats?

I apologize for my near meltdown last week. Everything’s fine. I’m fine. You’re fine. Well I may presume too much. Let’s get our minds off the global pandemic and the ensuing economic fallout. Think happy thoughts. Think fluffy thoughts. What’s fluffy? Cats are fluffy. I’ve got an idea. How about a Cats Month for this blog I’m writing from my remote location in the Florida Everglades? Doesn’t that sound nice? Doesn’t that sound peachy keen?

Tonight’s movie is 1972’s Night of a 1000 Cats from director René Cardona Jr.

1000A (1)

It’s a tour de force of screams, snarls, and entrails. The movie centers around a millionaire playboy named Hugo (Hugo Stiglitz). So the main character is named after the lead actor in the film if we are to believe the IMBD. Frankly, I don’t recall hearing his name mentioned in the movie, but how often do I pay attention to character names while watching these things. Still, I will call him Hugo for the remainder of the review and trust in the IMBD. (Do not confuse him with the Hugo Stiglitz of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds—that would be irresponsible).

1000D (1)

Hugo is a millionaire playboy as evidenced by the fact that he lives in an ancient monastery his ancestors inherited and the fact that he flies around in his own personal helicopter. This must impress the ladies since they fly up to his monastery to enjoy wine and cognac and to feast on meat dishes prepared by Dorgo (Gerardo Zepeda), Hugo’s malformed manservant. Hugo makes passionate love to these women before he tires of them and shows them his collection of severed heads.

Oh, yes. Hugo has a collection of severed heads in glass jars that he insists are made of wax, but none of the women buy what he’s saying since they know Hugo is a accomplished taxidermist. Are we to believe that he collects the heads of real animals, but would settle for wax replicas of human heads? I don’t think so. It’s around this time of discovery that Hugo chokes the life out of his latest female guest. Her head ends up in the collection, Dorgo burns her bones, and what’s left of her is ground into fresh meat.

1000B (1)

What is this human meat for you might ask? The meat is for Hugo’s other collection, his collection of one thousand feral cats that he keeps fenced in and secured from the rest of the castle. Every night, he tosses handfuls of ground up human flesh to the cats for reasons unknown. I’m not really sure what motivates Hugo to do any of this. At some point in the movie, Dorgo beats Hugo at a game of chess so Hugo gives him the honor of being the one to toss the lady flesh to the throngs of feisty felines, only to push him over a mezzanine to be devoured by their hungry jaws.

1000C

Hugo’s latest conquest is a bored housewife. She figures out his plan and makes a run for it. Hugo would have caught up to her, but the cats manage to get through the fence and decide the bite the hand that’s been feeding them. The young housewife manages to escape as we see an army of cats parading around Hugo’s dead body.

What the hell did I just watch? I better watch it again.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #1: Nightmare City

09 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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Cinema, Hugo Stiglitz, Nightmare City, The Curator of Schlock, Zombies

The Curator of Schlock #1 by Jeffrey Shuster

Nightmare City

Why should you pop Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City into you’re DVD player? It’s called Nightmare City. What makes the city a nightmare city? Zombies. Lots and lots of zombies.

Apparently, somewhere in Europe there was a radioactive spill at a nuclear plant. The movie doesn’t specify if it’s a nuclear power plant or a plant that makes nukes. Anyway, they send this scientist named Professor Otto Haggenbach over to find out what’s going on. When the good professor is scheduled to return, the local TV station sends ace reporter Dean Miller (played by Hugo Stiglitz) to interview him at the airport. A mysterious cargo plane lands and the military police are called in to yell at it with a megaphone. I could tell they were military police because their cars say POLICE on the side in big bold letters and they carry machine guns.

The door to the plane opens and lo and behold, it’s Professor Haggenbach. He looks a little frazzled, jet lagged. The Police Chief goes up greet him only to get stabbed in the chest with a pair of scissors by the good professor. The cargo bay door opens and a colony of zombies pours out. There must be about five hundred of them in there. And they’ve got axes, pipes, and other metal implements. As the hacking commences, some of the police try shooting at them with machine guns. The guns do no good and the next moment is awesome. The zombies start picking up the machine guns and using them against the humans. If zombies can use machine guns that pretty much does it for the human race.

I know what you’re thinking. Zombies can’t use machine guns. You’re probably among the same group of geeks who says robots in science fiction must always follow Asimov’s Three Laws. Let me tell you something, Italian zombies using machine guns is inspired. Not only do they use machine guns, they also wipe their mouths after feeding on people. Given time I’m sure they’d start using napkins. There’s one scene in Nightmare City where a bunch of them are clearly enjoying some Southern Comfort right from the bottle. And while these zombies attack men head on, they tend to tear off the blouse of every woman they run into.

Typically, I’d start rooting for the zombies at this point if we weren’t presented with one of the most heroic reporters in zombie movie history. Dean Miller uses everything at his disposal. He actually sets a bunch of zombies ablaze with a television set. He beats a zombie priest to death with a golden candlestick. So kudos to Dean Miller. He may not be too easy on the eyes, but looks don’t count for much in a zombie apocalypse.

Dean Miller is a man of action. That’s more than I can say for the generals who spend most of the movie held up in a bunker somewhere saying things like “It looks like the attackers will hit here, here, and here.” Or “Oh, it looks like the attackers dismantled the south power station. It will take hours to get it running again.” Or “Let’s not dramatize the situation and leak any news that might cause public disorder.” Hmmmm. You know what I think would lead to public disorder? An army of machine-gun-wielding undead cannibals attacking everything in sight!

I don’t want to spoil the twist ending for you.