Reading an old issue of British film mag Empire,I noticed a review from Kim Newman which said that people could hold a Barbara Shelley "cat" double bill,thanks to (the very good) Cat Girl and this John Gilling-directed flick coming out on DVD. Introduced to Hammer Horror with Gilling's superb dream-logic Gothic tale The Plague of the Zombies,I started searching round for more info,and I was thrilled to find the whole film online!,which led to me following the black cat.The plot:Licking their lips for the contents of a new will her husband pushed her to sign, Ella Venable's decide to speed things up and kill her.As they bury the body in the garden,her butler Andrew,husband Walter and the maid Clara promise to keep the killing secret,with the only one who does not agree being Ella's loyal cat Tabitha. Whilst trying find Ella's original will (which left nothing to him) Walter invites niece Elizabeth "Beth" Venable round,as the police search for "missing" Ella. As Walter secretly looks for the original will,Beth notices the trio are terrified of a cat!,who soon steps out of the shadows with its murderous paws.View on the film:Quoting Edgar Allan Poe opening lines of The Raven,the screenplay by George Baxt creams this "unofficial" Hammer Horror with a tightly spun murder mystery shadowed with a peculiar Gothic Horror purr.Largely taking place in the Venable house,Baxt attacks each of the murdering residences with a macabre delight,as the deaths in the cats eyes allows Baxt to tangle the killers in deadly Rube Goldberg twists. Hissing at the cat and Beth for asking questions about Ella's whereabouts,Baxt unrolls a delicious murder mystery,filling the dark corners of the house with frightful whispers over fears of Beth unlocking their secrets.Despite the black and white presentation taking away his remarkable use of colours, director John Gilling impressively still digs his claws into a rich Hammer Horror Gothic atmosphere.Casting a sense of fearful unease bubbling underneath the false concern for Ella, Gilling and cinematographer Arthur Grant stylishly whip-pan across each killer and strikes the viewer with their sly smiles. Holding back on the gore,Gilling dives in to the ridiculousness of the situation with fantastic first person tracking shots which make the cat look like a 60 foot beast. Staying in bed over fears of the avenging kitty, André Morell gives a splendid performance as Walter,who acts as a warm family figure,whose image Morell tears down to reveal the money grabber with scratches of death on his hands. Joining fellow Hammer star Morell,the elegant Barbara Shelley gives a terrific performance as Beth,whose puzzlement over everyone's fear of the cat Shelly curls up with a quick-witted questioning side,as Walter goes after that darn cat.

No supernatural creatures in this Hammer film, but a lot of the human cast in The Shadow Of The Cat thinks Tabitha is the feline from hell. Not that they don't deserve what happens to them.The film opens with Andre Morrell murdering his wife who controls the family fortune and with the connivance of two servants Andrew Crawford and Freda Jackson. The only witness to the event was Tabitha the cat and the sight of the cat gives them guilty consciences.Other relatives arrive including Barbara Shelley and her fiancé Conrad Phillips and Shelley is the only one that Tabitha behaves with. The others now influenced by Morrell all hate the cat, ascribing all kinds of supernatural behavior. And attempts to trap and kill it result in a whole lot of the cast being eliminated.This is a good one from Hammer because it relies on the human failings for these people to fail. Tabitha has no powers, she's just smarter than the rest of the humans in the cat. Cat's got Pussynality.

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

Shadow of the Cat is a Poe-esquire horror film that focuses on a sinister animal - the domestic cat. The film begins with a reciting of the Edgar Allen Poe poem 'The Raven', and from there we begin to focus on the title animal. There is nothing about this film that officially suggests it has anything to do with Hammer studios, but the feel of the film is very much like Hammer and the fact that John Gilling - the man behind two of the best Hammer horror films, Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile - is the director means that it has something of an affinity with the studio. The plot focuses on the common Gothic horror theme of a family and an inheritance. The family here is the Venable family, and the story starts properly when a rich old woman is murdered by her relatives because they're after her inheritance. The only witness to the crime was the lady's pet cat, and while normally anyone committing murder in this way would get away with it scot-free, this particular cat takes exception to the murder of its owner and sets about exacting its own revenge.The plot is, of course, pretty far fetched, but it's handled well and John Gilling never lets it descend into the realms of ridiculousness when it comes to people being murdered by the cat. The cat itself looks sinister enough, and while it doesn't have the same menace as, say, the murderous moggy in Lucio Fulci eighties impression of The Black Cat, the acting from the feline side of the cast is mostly fine. The thick Gothic atmosphere is the film's main asset, and John Gilling achieves this through the black and white cinematography as well as the decor of the central location and many of the events that transpire. The film is very short at around seventy five minutes, but this doesn't matter too much as Gilling makes his point and doesn't let too many sub-plots interfere with that. Of course, this sort of story is rarely going to give way to a truly GREAT film, as there isn't enough of it; but the film moves along nicely for the duration, and the events that build up to the ending ensure that the film does what you would expect of it. Overall, I doubt too many people will be disappointed with this and any fan of British horror will want to check it out.