original production:
Cast: Anjanette Comer (married woman), Zulma Faiad (exotic dancer), Hugo Stiglitz (playboy), Christa Linder (Christa), Teresa Velazquez (playboy's fiance), Barbara Angely (brunette), Gerardo Zepeda (Dorgo), Delia Pena Orta (Kathy, a little girl), Jorge Russek (husband), Marcelo Villamil (dancer's lover), John Kelly (stranded doctor)
SYNOPSIS:
A young man and woman make love on a beach, in a pool and on a boat. The man, a millionaire playboy, flies his new paramour Christa, in his private helicopter to his secluded mansion.
They are met at the door by a bald mute, Dorgo, Hugo's loyal butler. Hugo shows Christa around the beautiful gardens of the mansion, which he reveals to be a converted monastery of the Carmelite order of nuns, circa 1600.
Hugo takes Christa inside, to show her his "collections". Christa asks Hugo who else lives here: "Some very charming and silent guests".
Dorgo serves the couple dinner, a delicious filet mignon. As they eat, a white cat jumps across the dinner table. Hugo picks it up, walks it down the hall, and throws it into a giant, wired-in cage full of a thousand screaming, howling cats. Christa seems confused.
After dinner, Hugo shows Christa to his room of trophies. While her back is turned, Hugo takes the covering off a series of human heads lined up in glass cages. Christa turns, sees the heads, and screams. Hugo says, "Don't be afraid. They're only made of wax." Then Hugo strangles Christa to death.
Dorgo throws the ground-up remains of Christa to the screaming, ravenous cats, while Hugo eats supper, amused.
Hugo gets in his helicopter to find a new victim. Meanwhile, Dorgo drags a large canvas sack, presumably full of body parts, to a furnace and throws it in.
Hugo flies over someone's back yard, and spies an attractive young brunette sunbathing next to a pool. Anjanette gets a phone call, and goes inside. Hugo continues his hunt.
Hugo flies back to the pool where Anjanette was, and spies her little girl, Kathy, waving at him. The two girls watch Hugo fly by, then go inside to wait for Anjanette's husband.
After her husband leaves, Anjanette takes a shower. When she comes out, wrapped only in a red towel, she sees Hugo spying on her from his helicopter. He throws her a kiss. She turns up her nose.
Dorgo and Hugo play chess in the garden. Hugo wins.
Hugo flies his helicopter to Anjanette's back yard the next day, and throws down a ladder for her to join him. Anjanette declines, but does give Hugo her phone number, via hand signals.
Hugo returns to Anjanette's house the next day, this time riding a motorcycle, and watches as Kathy gets on a school bus, and Anjanette drives away in her car. Hugo follows on his cycle. They both end up at a local golf course.
The next day, Hugo flies by Anjanette's house yet again, and parachutes down a gift for Kathy, a dolly. Anjanette looks up and smiles. We next see Hugo and Anjanette making love. Anjanette is haunted by the various game trophies on Hugo's walls.
Hugo begins to escort Anjanette to his trophy room, but a doctor (John Kelly) knocks at Hugo's front door, and asks for assistance with a car accident. Hugo refuses, but Anjanette insists he help. Anjanette leaves, and Hugo is forced to let the doctor in. Hugo instructs Dorgo to kill the doctor, and feed the meat to his starving army of cats.
The next day, Hugo again returns to Anjanette's house on motorcycle, and watches in frustration as she interacts lovingly with her husband and child.
Hugo returns to his castle, depressed, and muses over his latest acquisition, the head of the doctor. As he stares, he reminisces about a former love affair with a beautiful blonde he really cared for, but who was killed by the jealous Dorgo as Hugo went inside to get her his mother's wedding ring.
Anjanette returns to Hugo's bed, and Hugo professes his love to her. Anjanette's husband calls, and she leaves. Hugo is so angry, he drowns Anjanette's cat in the pool.
Hugo and Dorgo play chess in the garden. This time Dorgo wins, so Hugo pushes him into the pit of ravenous cats.
Hugo returns to Anjanette's house via helicopter. The lovers go skin diving at the seashore.
Later, Hugo picks up an exotic dancer and takes her boating on a lake, where he tries to kill her. She gets wise, jumps out of the boat and swims to shore. Hugo catches up with her and strangles her.
The next day, Hugo kidnaps Kathy. They fly around together in the helicopter for awhile, but Hugo returns her safely home.
Hugo has Anjanette back to his castle. After dinner and lovemaking, Hugo lures her to his trophy room. Anjanette sees the heads encased in glass, the newest one Dorgo's, and throws her brandy at Hugo, cutting his face.
Anjanette picks up one of Hugo's spears and throws it, but misses and instead rips a hole in the cats' wire cage. The cats escape en masse, while Hugo and Anjanette struggle. The cats run amok and attack Hugo, scratching him to death. Anjanette escapes just in time, and drives off as the cats run amok.
The camera pans the gallery of heads, and stops on the last, an empty case, which was meant for Anjanette.
THE END.
GUEST SYNOPSIS:
by Brian Patrick
Millionaire playboy Hugo (whose lack of facial expressions give him the appearance of a Thundercat marionette) flies around Acapulco in his private helicopter to pick up sexy young women. He whisks them away to his secluded old castle, where he wines and dines them (among other things, *wink*). With the aid of his bald mute little helper Gorgo, he kills his dates, keeping their heads in a crystal cage and feeding their chopped up body parts to his 1,000-strong army of blood thirty, flesh hungry cats.
REVIEW:
This is a hilariously lame, preposterous horror film, from one of our favorite directors, Rene Cardona Jr. The whole concept is banal to the point of satire, and the film wrecks even its own primitive suppositions. The film appears to have been filmed with dialogue spoken in English, but lucky for us, it is badly redubbed anyway.
The two main characters have no names, only the peripheral ones. Kind of existential... The influence of pop-art and "mod" secret agent movies of the 60s is apparent, from the quick cutting to the hipster atmosphere to the frantic zooms to the groovy costuming to Raul Lavista's bouncy jazz score.
The title cats, trapped in a dingy wire-mesh cage, look more sad than psychotic, although their (dubbed) cries are somewhat unnerving, sounding like a distorted repeating loop of a kindergarten at potty time.
The playboy Hugo is a ridiculous hybrid of Hugh Hefner and a psychotic wild game hunter. He's such a creepy, predatory asshole. Can you say "Stalker"? The whole logic of Hugo's being able to fly around in his helicopter, looking for sexy chicks in everybody's back yards, is absolutely ridiculous. (Alotta people seem to hate all the aerial shots as Hugo flies his victims back to his lair, but they're fine, quite harmless, and add to the overall idiocy quite well.)
Hugo's opulent mansion/monastery is obviously a leftover castle set from a better production. He drinks warm brandy out of huge tumblers, and smokes hashish from his large collection of exotic opium pipes.
His flunkie, "Dorgo" (Tor meets Gorgo?) is a hulking pastiche of a retarded hippie doofus mobster. The "Heads" in glass cubes are terrible wax mock-ups, and wouldn't fool a flea. And if Hugo's victims are fed to his "ravenous" cats, what then are in the huge trash bags Dorgo stuffs in the furnace? The subplot with the little girl makes no sense whatsoever. The final attack on Hugo by his turncoat cats is silly and muddled, a perfect non-ending to a perfect non-movie.
And poor Anjanette Comer! How far a fall from the lovely and spooky Miss Thanatogunos of THE LOVED ONE, to sexy bimbo in a nothing horror film from nowhere! Still, amazingly, she gives this shameful role her best shot. It's fun to see her drive off in her late-model Chrysler New Yorker, while hubby speeds away in a Ford Mustang!
There is some light nudity at the beginning of the film, and later, a surprisingly risque scene when Hugo's dream blond is running away from Dorgo. She hops into camera and shows us a big slo-mo close-up of her panty hose-clad rump, very silly and very provocative.
This stunningly short and stupid feature has so little going for it as a bonafide horror or suspense film, yet so much perversely and charmingly wrong with it, its quite enchanting, and one can imagine squirming at a hot Florida drive-in, wondering if one could get one's money back for such an impossibly doofy cheat of a movie. Then, it was likely torture. Now, it is surely exquisite high-art trash.
COMMENTS:
* Taglines: "Alone, only a harmless pet... One thousand strong, they become a man-eating machine!" "When The Cats Are Hungry... Run For Your Lives!"
* NOTTC was first released in the US in 1973 as BLOOD FEAST. Murray leased it in 1974, possibly to run as the bottom of a double bill with his last, great original production, THUNDER COUNTY. THUNDER COUNTRY was picked up for further distribution by Joesph Brenner Associates.
* At virtually the same time as this pathetic psycho-pussy debacle, Cardona and Co. also made LA HORRIPLANTE BESTIA HUMANA (1968) a wild, gory, color remake of Cardona's own classic LAS LUCHADORAS CONTRA EL MEDICO ASESINO/aka DOCTOR OF DOOM (1962), which Murray protege Jerald Intrator picked up and released in the US as NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES in the early 70s, on a trippy double bill with FEAST OF FLESH/aka DEADLY ORGAN, to huge success. One wonders whether Murray was offered the superior film and turned it down. The latter double bill might have put him back on track.
NOTABLE DIALOGUE:
(from the collection of David Wilt)