The Cat (1992) Blu-ray Review: Goofy, Goopy Fun

There is a scene in the middle of The Cat, Lam Ngai Kai’s goofy, goopy sci-fi flick from 1992, where a rather large dog chases a small, black cat around an old junkyard. The cat acts more human than feline in the way it runs about. It has kung fu-like reflexes; it turns on one car’s windshield wipers to deflect the dogs attacks, etc. There is a moment when the dog has a hold of the cat, pushing it to the ground. The cat spies a canister of compressed gas just out of reach. The camera moves back and forth from the dog to the cat to the canister. Then to the cat’s paw reaching out to the canister. Then back to the dog growling. Then the paw. The cat reaches the canister, turns its wheel, and the gas sprays the dog.

We’ve seen this sort of scene in countless action flicks, and thrillers. Except with a human, not a cat. That’s the thing about this film; it often takes something familiar and plays with it just a bit to make it absurd and wonderful.

That cat isn’t a human, but it is an alien. It has taken the body of an old, dead Earth cat. There are two other aliens, Princess (Gloria Yip) and Errol (Lau Siu-ming), who have taken the bodies of humans. They are on the run from a different group of aliens known as “Star Killers.” They will eventually team up with Wisley (Waise Lee) in hopes of destroying the Star Killers for good so they can return to their home planet.

In between bouts of exposition that sound like nonsense and are confusing at best, there are absolutely bonkers fight scenes. The bad aliens look a mixture of the blobs in that 1950s film with Steve McQueen, a reject from John Carpenter’s The Thing, and something you might see on Doctor Who circa the early 1980s.

Our heroes are after a couple of octagonal-shaped artifacts. These can be combined and turned into weapons to kill the Star Killers. If the film explained what exactly these artifacts are and how they came to be on Earth, I must have missed it. Everything about this film is nonsensical and goofy.

There is an early scene in which Princess is on the roof with the cat. She floats up into the sky and does this weird little maneuver where she lands on an antenna, then flies away, lands back on the antenna, and flies away again. She does this several times. Sometimes, the cat joins her. Then it climbs the antenna. There is absolutely no reason for this scene to exist, except to show that she can fly, I guess. But she never flies again. I half expected her to break into song, because why not?

I loved it. Everyone involved in this film seems to understand that it is an utterly ridiculous movie, and they just decided to go with it. If you can let go of that part of your brain that wants things like plots and character motivations to make sense and just go with it, I think you may find yourself thoroughly enjoying this film as well.

88 Films presents The Cat with a new 2K transfer and it looks fantastic.

Extras include

• Brand new 2K restoration from the original negative
• Remastered original Cantonese monaural soundtrack
• Newly translated English subtitles
• Audio commentary by Frank Djeng
• Brand new film interview with writer Gordon Chan
• Image Gallery
• Rigid slipcase with new art from Sean Longmore
• A 40-page booklet
• An artcard