Treasure hunter cum murderer, wannabe reality TV star and perpetual dickwad, Sean (Stefan Gatt), recruits a cohort of youthful scientific “experts” to join him on an adventure in the Caribbean (although the majority of the film is still shot in the titular Malibu mansion). In many ways, this is kitten’s first schlock film.The third film in the 1313 “unexplained phenomena” trilogy. Unlike Garfield, where Bill Murray’s disaffected performance raises artistic pondering, Duffy’s utterly off-putting audio design complements every other otherworldly element of A Talking Cat!?!. Roberts is as prolific an actor as DeCoteau is a director, both working men who work. It could quite literally be a phone-in performance. Believable, because the audio also sounds like it was recorded in the back of a car or maybe a broom closet somewhere, complete with bizarre echo and wavering audio levels. Roberts reportedly recorded his lines in 15 minutes. When that happens, a shitty animated mouth is superimposed on the cat performer, appropriately matching Roberts’ shitty off-the-script read of his dialogue. He narrates the movie, mostly, except in the short instances where he directly converses with disbelieving humans. Roberts voices Duffy, the monotone fur-baby stray who wanders in and out of the human’s lives. I haven’t even mentioned the true star of the show. Make no mistake, though: This is so bad it’s good. A team molded by the early days of VHS and DVD and now the VOD streaming wars, where simply having content is more important than the content of that content. This a rush job by a director who churns out schlock in a single week. It’s an apt comparison, but what sets this delightful trash apart is that it’s not by a first-time egotistical madman. After all, it’s a movie for children.Ĭat!?! has been compared to other “so bad it’s good” classics like The Room or Fateful Findings: movies that are legendarily lousy, campy, unintentionally hilarious. Everything about Cat !?! over-the-top and excessive on a genetic level, but never explicit. It’s shot as such! This is an exploitation film with all the buildup and none of the erotic catharsis. Chris can’t swim, so when Trent shows up randomly at his house and asks to strip down and take a little dip … well, that’s not a scenario too far off from a different MPAA rating. Chris and Tina’s initial discussion about how to study - as she offers to bathe for him while he reads basic high school English - is as awkward as it is hilarious. Exploitation cinema has a true visual language all its own what sets A Talking Cat!?! apart from other lo-fi crap for kids is that it is shot with the pure “get it done and give them something to see” aesthetic of an artist whose defining silver-screen achievement was framing buff men in lily-white briefs fighting CGI monsters.ĭialogue that would otherwise play innocently in a lesser film has a tinge of eroticism. The 1313 series includes titles such as 1313: Haunted Frat, 1313: Boy Crazies and 1313: Giant Killer Bees. DeCoteau’s longest running series was 1313, which pioneered the softcore gay VOD subgenre. It feels like a porno mansion because it is a porno mansion. The house is so gigantic that the little decoration he uses stands out against the excessively enlarged living space. Car-husk couches, strange artwork, modernist furniture, crumbling landscaping. Can he use his wise feline advice to bring these families together? One thing is for sure: This is the kind of job only a talking cat can solve, probably.ĭeCoteau sets most of the tale in a dilapidated Los Angeles mansion filled with visual non-sequiturs. Duffy (Eric Roberts), that titular cat, struts into their lives to offer advice with but one caveat: He can only speak to any given human once. Across the woods and behind Phil’s house lives a small family led by single mother Susan (Kristine DeBell), whose son, Trent (Daniel Dannas), and daughter, Frannie (Alison Sieke), both face questions about their life paths as adulthood nears. Chris is a sweet nerd in love with Tina (Janis Peebles), a popular girl who asks him to tutor her in English while she swims in his pool. Cat!?! is his approach to a family film and stars former child actor Johnny Whitaker as Phil, a recently retired coding genius unsure how to approach his day-to-day life without looming deadlines to distract him from his hopelessly awkward son, Chris (Justin Cone). A Talking Cat!?! is a low-budget VOD masterpiece from Roger Corman protégé David DeCoteau, whose filmography numbers into the hundreds and spans every genre imaginable.
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