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| All Images Courtesy 88 Films/Fortune Star |
Lam Nai-Choi is without a doubt one of the most uniquely weird, unhinged, and unpredictable auteurs from the 1980s and 90s golden era of Hong Kong cinema – and if you’re familiar with much 1980s and 90s Hong Kong cinema, you know that’s saying something. American cult film audiences will likely know his beloved gonzo action bloodbath Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, since that one actually managed to get a prominent VHS and DVD release in the US in the 90s, and some of its more absurd and bloody moments became early memes. But most of his other films never got US distribution, besides imports from Hong Kong that you only could have found at particularly dedicated video stores, so many American viewers would have been deprived of the knowledge that Riki-Oh was just the tip of the Lam Nai-Choi iceberg, and many of his other films are every bit as delightfully bonkers. Thankfully that is starting to change. Earlier this year Vinegar Syndrome released a very nice disc of his wild fantasy/action/horror fever-dream The Seventh Curse, which stars Chow Yun-Fat and feels like a Hong Kong sibling film to Big Trouble in Little China. Later this fall 88 Films are releasing (UK-only, although I hope US releases will follow) blu-rays of his creature-effects-heavy supernatural martial arts spectacles Peacock King and The Saga of the Phoenix, both starring Yuen Biao. And later this month, 88 Films is bringing us the US debut of one of Lam’s most wild and unpredictable cult classics, the absolutely singular The Cat.
THE FILM:
Words cannot quite do justice to just what a bonkers cinematic journey The Cat is… it stars Waise Lee (A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head) as recurring Hong Kong pulp fiction hero Wisely, a private eye, novelist, and adventurer trying to get to the bottom of a mystery involving stolen artifacts, mysterious deaths, and aliens. What he finds is a group of alien fugitives hiding on earth in assumed forms, being pursued across the universe by a huge, amorphous, evil entity that’s a lot like a Lovecraftian elder god. It just so happens that one of the alien fugitives is stuck in the form of a fluffy black cat. A very intelligent and cunning team-leader black cat who knows martial arts and can break into museums, but a black cat nonetheless. And now the cat, Wisely, and the cat’s fellow fugitive (Gloria Yip, Peacock King and Riki-Oh) have to save the world from the evil.
It is a wild premise, based on one of Ni Kuang’s Wisely novels from the same long-running series that The Seventh Curse was adapted from. And just as in that previous film, Lam Nai-Choi makes the absolutely batshit storyline work perfectly by confidently leaning into the craziness of it all, and fully embracing it. He is a director who fearlessly commits to the strangeness of his films, taking the viewer for a whirlwind journey through a story that plays by its own absurd rules, and trusting that we can keep up. The result is an intoxicatingly weird experience, propelled by his confidently-crafted style, great visuals and practical effects, and unpredictable internal logic where anything could happen at any time and probably will, and that is exactly the fun of it all. It’s a movie where we see the cat’s paws comically reach into frame and break into a museum glass case, before the cat flies away with the artifact inside, and also a movie where the Yog Sothoth-esque villain entity consumes a building and all the people in it, through truly spectacular and gory practical effects. In other words, it’s one hell of a ride.
Much like Chow Yun-Fat lending his gravitas and charisma to The Seventh Curse, one thing that helps sell all the craziness is how the movie is grounded by some strong performances by excellent Hong Kong actors. Waise Lee, an excellent actor known for his complicated and corrupt characters in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow and Bullet in the Head, lends that seriousness to the totally straight-faced portrayal of Wisely as a private eye, delivering wild exposition about combat-savvy cats from outer space in the form of hilariously dissonant hard-boiled noir-ish voiceover in the tradition of Philip Marlowe. Gloria Yip likewise does a great job of carrying the scenes focused on the cat himself, as the cat’s humanoid familiar and interpreter. And Philip Kwok (Hard Boiled), as always, makes a reliable heavy, and also acts as the film’s stunt coordinator.
But of course, the real main character of this movie is the cat. And he absolutely steals the show, as an expressive, chaotic, adorable, and extremely fun feline protagonist. The cat is brought to life through a lot of close-ups of very expressive cat actors, who play the part perfectly, and assorted special effects for the moments where a real cat couldn’t or shouldn’t be used. How much Lam is able to get real cats to act the part is extremely impressive (although how often they are clearly shooting around a cat who isn’t there or wouldn’t cooperate is also telling), and the blending of actual cat actors and special effects works extremely well. The most famous sequence in the film is a showstopping martial arts fight between the cat and a dog, which goes on for several minutes and includes stop-motion, puppetry, and actual animals, and it absolutely lives up to the hype. Cat-lovers should definitely enjoy following the title character on its adventures, although they also will likely have some questions.
.jpg "The Cat 1992 88 Films blu-ray")
Of course, if you’re an animal-lover like myself, one ethical question you will probably have about The Cat is – how did the production treat the real cats used to make it? Do the filmmakers ever deliberately harm or injure a cat on-screen for the sake of the film? While the answer of how the production treated its animal actors is a bit more complicated (more on that in a moment), it is clear from watching the film that no, the production never deliberately harmed a cat on camera, and there is no real-life animal violence on-screen in the film. In fact, it is clear that the production largely avoided putting its cat actors in dangerous situations where one might be hurt: anytime the cat character is doing anything dangerous, the cat is very obviously replaced by puppets or stop-motion effects. The transitions between live cat, puppet, and stop-motion feel relatively seamless, but it’s still obvious when we are not looking at a real live cat, and viewers can take comfort in knowing that an animal is not being endangered in those moments. There is one shot where a cat is clearly being put in distress, and is squirming hard to get away, which I didn’t love seeing, but it appears that the cat is being annoyed or made uncomfortable, but not actually hurt.
However, in the disc’s special features, screenwriter Gordon Chan reveals that a couple cats were tragically killed in accidents early in production, and that this led to some scenes in the script being abandoned entirely, although not having been on-set he didn’t know the details. Frank Djeng’s commentary, however, includes more information on the topic: after these accidents that cost a couple cats their lives, the film’s original special effects director was promptly fired by the producers on grounds of animal endangerment, just three days into the production. The film’s original director later wound up quitting as well. After that, under the eye of final director Lam Nai-Choi and his special effects team, it seems that the film successfully changed how it treated its animals. While it is awful that the original special effects director was guilty of animal endangerment that lead to the death of cats, knowing that the production took this seriously, quickly fired the guilty party, and made sure that their animal actors were not put in danger going forward makes me feel okay about still enjoying the film.
That thorny history aside, which I’m glad at least ends positively, I absolutely loved The Cat. It is completely bonkers in the best way, packed with great creature effects, and the main character is a cat – what’s not to enjoy? While for all-out batshit insanity I still think The Seventh Curse takes the cake, this is a top-tier Lam Nai-Choi film, and absolutely both one of his strangest and one of his best. Cult cinema fans should really dig this one – especially if they are cat-lovers as well. 88 Films did some amazing work making this finally available in the US on an official release.
THE 88 FILMS SPECIAL EDITION:
The Cat comes to us from 88 Films in a very nice hardbox limited edition (which as of this writing is already nearly sold out everywhere in pre-order, though hopefully some retailers will get more for street date – good luck!), with a standard edition coming later for those who miss the limited. The limited edition includes art cards with the new and original poster art, and a book with a couple essays about the film.
As for the disc itself, which will presumably be identical on the eventual standard edition, it presents the film in a new 2k restoration from the original negative, provided by Fortune Star. The transfer looks excellent: very sharp and detailed, and absolutely pristine, with rich colors and very strong contrast. I see no evidence of digital tinkering – it looks quite filmic. The transfer is a revelation compared to the crappy DVD-era transfers previously available. The Cantonese 2.0 audio sounds clean and crisp, and as good as a 1992 2.0 audio mix possibly could. While the disc might not appease the “UHD and surround sound or nothing” crowd, that’s clearly not the point – this is an absolutely massive upgrade for a long-neglected film, and most fans will be thrilled.
As far as extras go, the disc doesn’t have that much, but what’s there is very good. There is an interview with screenwriter Gordon Chan, which provides a lot of context to how he adapted the strange story from Ni Kuang’s novel, and which unpacks some of the film’s deeper themes, like the anxieties that many Hong Kongers felt about the looming 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to mainland China. Then there is an audio commentary by Frank Djeng, which like all of his commentaries is extremely dense with information about the film, and a fascinating listen. His commentaries always deepen one’s appreciation for any film, and are a great way to learn more about Hong Kong cinema in general, and this one does not disappoint.
Rounding out the extras is an extremely cool and unusual one – in theory, anyway. The disc contains the alternate Japanese version of The Cat, in SD, sourced from a Japanese laserdisc. If you’re a collector of boutique blu-rays of Hong Kong films, by now you will be no stranger to alternate Japanese or Taiwanese or English-language-export versions of films, often at least partly sourced from laserdisc masters; they’re quite common, as Hong Kong studios loved to prepare alternate cuts of films for export markets. But they are usually just more or less the same movie, but with a few minutes of deleted scenes, or some scenes removed and alternate scenes added. The Japanese cut of The Cat is a whole different beast: it is literally a completely different movie, with a different cast, shot by a Japanese director in parallel with the Hong Kong production, with only the big special effects sequences shared between the two versions. The story goes that The Cat was a Japanese co-production, and the financing was contingent on having a second Japanese director shoot a whole other version of the film specifically for their market, with a Japanese star.
Having a completely different second version of the film sounds like a great thing – until you actually watch it, that is. Unfortunately, the Japanese version of The Cat is bad. The Japanese director was apparently quite a novice (again, according to Frank Djeng’s commentary), and it shows: the direction on this alternate version is stiff and uninspired, and the result is a very dry and dull film with torpid pacing and very pedestrian camerawork and visuals. In other words, it possesses almost none of the strengths of the gloriously weird original, aside from recycling the great effects sequences. This does, however, go to further illustrate just what a brilliantly weird director Lam Nai-Choi was, and how much he was responsible for elevating The Cat to its cult-classic status. I’m very glad they they included this uniquely different Japanese cut of the film, but I don’t recommend it.
The Cat is a wonderfully weird film brimming with imagination, fantastic visuals, and the uniquely wild sensibilities of Lam Nai-Choi. Not to mention, the hero of the film is a cat – what’s not to love? If you’re a fan of Lam’s, this disc is a must-own, as one of his best. If you’re a relative newcomer to Lam’s oeuvre, this is absolutely still essential viewing if you like your cult films wacky and weird – and then you need to make sure you also see Riki-Oh, The Seventh Curse, and Peacock King as soon as possible. Either way, I definitely recommend this film, and 88 Films’ fantastic special edition.
- Christopher S. Jordan