The "Nevermind, Rewind" Turd Of The Week

How many cats is too many cats?  Let's say you met someone at a bar, bistro or Barnes & Noble, head back to their place for a night cap (meaning intercourse or a movie, depending on your religious beliefs) and that person happens to live alone and own FOUR cats.  Is that enough to be off-putting?  What about SIX cats?  Is six cats the line you draw in the cat sand?  I suppose everyone is different, but for us at TEC, it's two.  Two is too many cats for a single person to own.  If you don't agree, then you don't realize how bad your apartment smells every time we come over.  It's gross.  What if your hypothetical new found friend owned 1,000 cats?  Like an entire outdoor prison-like courtyard of screaming cats that he/she presided over in a silk bathrobe while his/her crusty butler massaged his/her toes?

What's that you didn't say?  This no longer sounds like a hypothetical real-life scenario, but instead the scripted plot of a Mexican-sploitation horror movie?  Well, then you'd be fairly right.  Some time in 1972, director, Rene Cardova Jr. asked himself this very same cat question and not only did he come up with possibly the least reasonable amount of cats to own, but an entire horror movie plot surrounding this imagined king cat creeper of all cat creeps!  That's right, Enemaniacs.  Get your inhalers ready, for tonight is, THE NIGHT OF 1,000 CATS !  No, really.  If you are allergic, some of the scenes in this movie will make you itch.  You have been warned. 

"Why does it smell like tuna and cat pis... 
ooh, did you say wine?"

With a title and premise like, THE NIGHT OF 1,000 CATS (LA NOCHE DE LOS MIL GATOS), this film clearly and initially and understandably had butt-loads of promise.  Made in glorious and rustic, 1972, but released in the United States in 1974, the plot revolves around a young millionaire playboy named Hugo, who picks up beautiful women and brings them back to his sprawling, ancient estate only to murder them and feed their corpses to his collection of carnivorous cats.  With a story like this, what could go wrong?  He is aided in this nightly endeavor by his face, his helicopter, his sweet motorcycle and his hump-backed, google-eyed old Torgo-esque butler named..."Dorgo," (possibly).  I'm sure there is some sort of metaphor there, but who cares.  When the film opens, Hugo is flying back to his castle in his helicopter with a lovely lady at his side.  This helicopter ride is somehow important to the plot, I'm assuming, because it lasts 12 MINUTES LONG.  We get it.  He has a helicopter.  The woman seems pretty impressed by the helicopter and even more so by the mansion (once they finally land there), but becomes immediately put-off by the mutant butler.  What is he deal and who grows humps anymore?  She inquires about Dorgo and his hump, to which Hugo replies:

Hugo: "...Dorgo is an excellent butler.  He's as obedient and faithful as a cat."

Wait, "obedient" as a cat?  Is that a thing?  Hugo then begins to blabber about his "special" and "unique collection" that will surpass that of all of his ancestors who he refers to as having "...had a mania for collecting."  This is probably when his female guest should be wondering if that collection involves pretty lady skin suits, but sadly for this lady, Hugo is just way too charming and the wine is just way too tasty and beautifully aged so she soon overlooks the clear warning signs of a maniacal murderous millionaire (i.e, a deformed servant, a barely inhabited ancient castle, the mentions of an "unusual collection," the sounds of a beast horde howling for flesh somewhere on the castle grounds, etc.).  Good wine is good wine, you guys.

A couple of sips later, Hugo's guest inquires as to whether anyone else lives in the mansion.  Hugo responds:

Are your eyes itching yet?

Hugo: "...Some very charming and silent guests.  You'll meet them after we've had dinner."

This turns out to be a lie for at least two reasons.  One, she ends up meeting a guest during the dinner, rather than after, when the charmer literally flies out of nowhere and punches her boobs with it's paws, promptly scaring the shit out of her (this scene is mostly hilarious).  Two, "charming" and "silent" are inappropriate and misleading adjectives for a large outdoor cage of 1,000 feral cats.  Of course, our poor dinner guest never does get to meet the cat crew formally.  Instead, she's strangled by Hugo and dismembered, then presumably ground into hamburger meat and thrown off a balcony to be eaten by Hugo's courtyard of scratching, screaming, roommates.  This part of the movie involves the very first cringe-worthy Milo & Otis animal cruelty moment, when Hugo picks up a cat from the ground and CHUCKS IT HARD off of the balcony.  We are shown a long and drawn out Million Dollar Man slow motion scene of a cat, attempting to land on it's feet, but is most likely falling to its death.  Thanks, Mexico.  Afterward, we're treated to another helicopter cat food run that involves Hugo flying over women's houses and backyards, deciding whether or not they would make adequate short lived dinner dates before he makes them dinner...on that date...that he takes them to dinner...just forget it.

Who wouldn't suck down a free
chardonnay from this guy?

This next long helicopter ride of aerial shots and close ups is really where I gave up on this thing.  I was hoping to maybe hold out for the possibility of a large mutant momma cat, genetic cat experiments or perhaps learning what the cat-alyst (ha!) was leading Hugo to a life of cat-related crime, but between these long unnecessary helicopter rides and artsy attempts at cocktail framed face shots like the one to the left, I was reminded why I've always preferred dogs.  If you can make it through this one, let me know if Dorgo turns out to be some inbred-dog-DNA'ed mutant who eventually turns on his master when he falls for one of the kidnapped women who teaches him life isn't meant to be lived on your knees and sacrifices himself when fighting the cat horde to the death to save her and finally destroy his master?  Though that ending would be sexist somehow, I'll be sad if I miss it.