The Cat

1992 sci-fi kitty movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy apparently named Wei Si Li but who my English subtitles called Wisely and who is played by an actor named Waise Lee gets involved with a couple of people and a cat who are trying to save the world from an alien. I guess.

Really weird science fiction movie from the director of Riki-Oh. This actually has a fight scene that bests anything in that splatterific kung-fu extravaganza--a fight between the titular feline and a mean dog. Seriously, that is something else, one of those scenes that you watch and think, "I can't believe I'm seeing this on my television screen!" I call this a weird movie, probably because I don't understand it, but there's not much that really stands out as being weirder than any other science fiction movie if you think about it. Somehow, however, all the parts add up to something that just ain't right. There's a really cool monster, the kind that only Asians can manufacture. There's also this Robocop-type figure, flying cats, and other hardcore shenanigans, and it all made very little sense to me. That didn't stop me from enjoying myself, more than I did when watching Riki-Oh at least. My favorite bits include the gelatinous tree monster thing, an electrocuted dog, a subtitle that read "I never knew a cat could fight to and so hard!", tail repair, and a scene where the cat jumps through a window and makes a perfect cat-shaped hole in the glass. I didn't think glass could break that way, but who am I to argue with The Cat or, as it's also apparently known, The 1,000 Year Cat. This was sadly director Ngai Choi Lam's final movie.