Confessions of a Psycho Cat (1968) User Reviews

Curious sixties exploitation

[The_Void · 6/10 · 29 May 2006]

This decidedly odd little cult classic doesn't really seem to know what it wants to be. On one hand, it's a violent thriller, on another it's an absurd comedy; and it's all filmed in the style 'nouvelle vogue' style of films such as Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless! This sort of curio coming together can sometimes work well together, but the result with this film seems more messy than anything else, and while I imagine Quentin Tarantino got quite a kick out of this, I didn't...at least, not really. There are actually some really good scenes in this film, such the 'bull fighting' scene and the ending, but the way that these scenes are implemented in the plot doesn't offer much in the way of interest, which harms the finished product. The plot is no doubt interesting, and follows a young woman who invites three men to her house. After telling them of a game, she sends them away with the knowledge that once they receive a cheque for $100,000 from her, they will have to survive 24 hours in Manhattan before being allowed to cash it in. The only catch here is that she'll be hunting them down...

The plot takes obvious influence from the 1932 classic 'The Most Dangerous Game' as it follows the idea of a human prey, but it's also obvious that Herb Stanley's film isn't too interested in it's plot, and more concerned with jumping on the sixties exploitation bandwagon, as many scenes (sex scenes in particular) exist for no other reason than to ensure that the film got the exploitation classification. This actually got on my nerves as the plot is interesting; yet not a great deal of screen time is devoted to it. The way that the film has an upper class woman as the hunter is fun, and the juxtaposition between her class status and the game she's playing works well in establishing her insanity. The acting leaves a lot to be desired, with only 'Raging Bull' himself Jake LaMotta standing out for the cult fans in the support cast (and standing out for all the wrong reasons, I might add). Eileen Lord is good, however, in her role as the title character and overall, while this film didn't appeal to me much - exploitation fans should be happy and it gets a recommendation to anyone who likes their odd cult films.

Pre-Insert Version

[Gbbooks · 7/10 · 2 February 2004]

In the 60s, I saw this film at the Fox Theater in Detroit. It may have been playing under the title " Loves of a Psycho Cat" or "Three Loves of a Psycho Cat" and was without the sexploitation scenes. I remember it possessing a certain charm. I've read the other comments posted. While it may not be great movie, "Psycho Cat" seems to have captured people's interest. If a print of this cut still exists, I believe, many might prefer this non-sexploitation version to the one released by Something Weird.

stunning 60s NYC indie thriller, slowed down by nudie inserts

[django-1 · 9/10 · 18 December 2002]

This very-low-budget independent thriller--a gritty NYC Freudian rewrite of The Most Dangerous Game--was a real surprise to me, as its director has no other credits on the IMDB. Psychotic Eileen Lord (whose performance belongs on the same shelf as Jack Nicholson's in THE SHINING or Tab Hunter's in THE AROUSERS)hunts down three men--a junkie, an over-the-hill stage actor, and a professional wrestler down on his luck--and cackles with glee while she's doing it. The crisp B&W New York locations are so real you can taste them, and the small, sparse sets (and some real houses/apartments too, it seems to me) are shot imaginatively. The camera work is unconventional and the editing is tight and gives the film a good pacing. Unfortunately, this film, which probably ran about 55 minutes in its original form, is ruined by about 15 minutes of poorly-shot nudie footage edited in at a later date, or at least shot by someone else who had no style to speak of. These inserts, I suppose, allowed the film to play on the "adult film" circuit, and probably gave it more of an audience than it could have gotten otherwise. However, it really belongs on the same shelf with films such as THE THRILL KILLERS, and its true audience is lovers of 60s sleazy,grim horror-crime films. Nudie fans have hundreds of films to enjoy, but CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT is a rare gem that once seen is not soon forgotten. Perhaps the release of this on a snazzy new DVD will cause the makers to come out of the woodwork and talk to some film researchers...maybe someday there will be a DVD with DIFFERENT VERSIONS of the film, including one without the inserts? A must-see for students of 1960s independent cinema.

Wow, what a movie!

[chrisburin · 4 January 2004]

Or, if you like King Kong, holy mackerel, whadda show! This movie is out of control, a great original idea, sick beyond belief and genuinely creepy (yet arousing) at times; the craziness of the whole shebang is heightened by the fact that some of the characters - not least Eileen Lord as Virginia - seem to be genuinely insane. Garrett is perhaps the craziest of the lot, just being himself, dancing around with his broomstick, doffing his top hat to all and sundry and generally munching away on anything that passes by in his time-honoured fashion.

The Girl is Wild and Kinky. The Girl's a Super Freak!

[Coventry · 8/10 · 16 April 2008]

Don't you just love with it when a blind purchase surpasses your anticipations with approximately 200%? I hoped for very little when I bought "Confessions of a Psycho Cat", especially since it got released on a DVD label specializing in cinematic trash (the Dutch equivalent of "Something Weird Video) and because the cover exclusively parades scantily dressed girls. But what I saw was a surprisingly energetic and pleasantly deranged late 60's Grindhouse gem. The rudimentary subject matter is hugely derivative and more than half of the film is sleazy padding footage (added afterwards to stretch the running time and lure more boob-fanatics), but director Herb Stanley – simply credited as "Eve" for some reason – nevertheless attempts to implement an more involving narrative structure, with many flashbacks and voice-overs. The plot sort of re-enacts the legendary concept of "The Most Dangerous Game". The wealthy but utterly deranged Viriginia Marcus is hindered to accompany her brother for the annual African safari, so she decides to throw her own private hunting party in the middle of Manhattan. She carefully selects three men with questionable pasts and offers them $100.000 if they manage to survive one whole day with her hunting them. As said, the hunting-humans plot isn't the least bit original, but who cares, as this formula always guarantees thrills and sheer excitement. Particularly in this case, where the huntress is an utterly bonkers lady (a psycho cat…) who treats her victims as animals and adapts her hunting methods to each different species. In case you're still not convinced "Confessions of a Psycho Cat" is a must-see, just wait until you see the explanation and complementary flashback sequence illustrating what caused Viriginia to lose her sanity at young age! I can only say: easily offended lovers of cute little puppies … beware! The hunting games are continuously interlarded with images of a drug party/orgy, where one of the hunting trophies seeks refuge and narrates the experiences to his naked friends. God, I love this type of film-making! "Confessions of a Psycho Cat" is completely over-the-top and tasteless, but you can't help staring at the screen wearing a big rancid smile on your face. The cinematography and editing aren't as amateurish as I initially feared and even the acting performances are somewhat adequate. The films owes part of its cult-reputation to the fact that boxing legend Jake LaMotta stars as one of the hunting targets, but it's simply a fantastically entertaining movie either way.

Look what the (psycho) cat dragged in.

[gavcrimson · 2 January 2002]

SPOILERS 'There was a young lady who went on a spree.she carefully planned a game for three' Confessions of a Psycho Cat updates the plot of The Most Dangerous Game to late Sixties New York, with all the exploitation movie sex and violence you'd expect from such a setting, along with gender- reversing the Count Zaroff role to tell the tale of a lethal female.

The Psycho Cat of the title is Virginia, a nervous breakdown prone Manhattan socialite who is 'a little out-of-sorts'. Unable to join her brother on safari, Virginia decides to have a little safari of her own-hunting humans. The intended prey are Buddy a junkie drug dealer, Freeman a pompous actor, and Rocco a brutish, has-been, wrestler (played by former middle-weight boxing champion Jake LaMotta)- all three are offered $100,000 if they can survive in New York for 24 hours while Virginia and her mute handyman try to hunt and kill them. Why has Virginia choose these three men in particular? because they've all 'accidentally' killed in the past, Buddy overdosed a girl, the actor ended up slicing a love rival to death with a cut-throat razor, while the wrestler stomped an opponent to a bloody pulp- after some hesitation the men except Virginia's offer.

The subsequent hunt scenes have a nightmarish quality that are worth the admission price alone, but Psycho-Cat scores best in the prelude to Virginia's rampage as we delve into the private lives of her prey, three sad and understandably paranoid lowlifes. The junkie lays low at a drug and sex orgy populated by beatniks and women with outrageous wigs, the actor hides in his apartment like a frightened rabbit, and the wrestler spends the night with a $20 hooker, but with sadistic glee Virginia plays on their human failings to lure them into the open. The actor gets a call offering him the lead in a play, and ever the egoistical thespian this is an offer he can't refuse, while Buddy's drug habit dictates he would rather risk death than cold turkey, and the wrestler can't stand the idea of being upstaged by a woman, a situation that winds him up so much the hooker gives him the twenty dollars back and throws him out. In all three cases Virginia gets to dish out her own brand of morality, the actor is run through with a sword; Buddy gets literally shot-up, while the wrester tracks down Virginia only to end up in the middle of a bullfight with him as the bull.

As the Psycho-Cat, Eileen Lord who vaguely resembles 60's singer Esther Ofarim isn't the sort of actress you can easily forget. Even from the outset its clear Virginia isn't exactly normal and as Psycho Cat progresses, the filmmakers lap-up Lord's hammy attempts at evoking delirium- with some incredible close-ups of her pulling the sort of gargoyle expressions its hard to believe a human face can make. The casting of Jake LaMotta is an equally inspired touch, it's fascinating to compare the worse-for-wear LaMotta preserved for prosperity in Psycho Cat, to the way DeNiro later portrayed these leaner years in Raging Bull. In scenes where his character sits shirtless screaming down the phone 'I am the champ' its almost as if LaMotta is acting in his own, personal Raging Bull. On a trivia note, LaMotta isn't credited in the cast list, but by the time the film was re-released as '3 Loves of a Psycho-Cat' his name and boxing legacy featured heavily in the advertising. No one has ever uncovered the story behind Psycho Cat's creation, but judging by the end-result it must be a fascinating little tale. The released version is very much a cut and paste job, telling its convoluted tale in flash-backs and flash-forwards that don't quite match with each other, there's also lots of soft-core nudie scenes, very detached from the narrative that were clearly shot to sex-up the film's commercial appeal, while plot-diversions explaining how Buddy, Freeman and Rocco came to be murderers and murdered feel like six separate films unto themselves. The DVD notes speculate Psycho Cat was shot as a plain old horror movie with the soft-core filmed a few years later, although the film could equally have been the work of multiple directors shooting the same film simultaneously, even if they weren't exactly singing from the same song-sheet. That these directors- 'Eve' and 'Herb Stanley' remain mysterious if not pseudonymous figures, only adds to Psycho Cat's appeal and whereas most cut and paste films are only interesting for the glimpses of what they could have been, and the incoherent messes that they usually are, Psycho Cat manages to hold its multilayered plot together surprisingly well. The film also gets top-notch mileage out of its settings, with wonderful shots of LaMotta snorting his way through night-time New York, the junkie prowling the streets looking for a toilet to call home, and most audacious cross-bow carrying Virginia running around Manhattan in fox hunting togs, something that must have earned the filmmakers some odd-looks from passers-by.

For a film no-one appears to have heard of till recently Psycho Cat seems to have had quite a longevity on the US sexploitation circuit. It even played in the UK sometime in the early Seventies- too strong for the UK censor showings were restricted to 'membership only' sex cinemas- Psycho Cat played exclusively on the Cinecenta-cinema-chain which fed post-swinging Londoners a diet of more darker US exploitation fare like Bad Girls Go to Hell, The Filthy Five, Sex Killers Incorporated, and the charmingly monickered Sinful Kinfolk which played as a support feature to Psycho Cat. These days you can view Psycho Cat in less clandestine ways (its played on late night UK television and has surfaced on DVD in the US) but the violent, kinky nature that gave the film its initial fascination remains undiminished. A unique, stand-alone piece of work, Psycho Cat deserves its current popularity, as do its makers whoever they were.

female huntress prowls men!

[EyeAskance · 20 September 2003]

Genuine oddity in the world of grindhouse trash, this is a well rendered film that gives a fresh twist to a fairly unoriginal story. An eccentric woman assembles the ultimate hunt...and it's man season! A group of selected males must survive a single night as they are stalked for the kill...if they live, they win a large sum of cash. Comical and over-the-top, this is wild sleaze given the irritating sexploitation insert treatment(lengthy scenes of softcore sex, unrelated to the story)...still worth watching. 7/10

A very energetic and entertaining 60's grindhouse thriller gem

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 5 November 2008]

Nutty rich lady Virginia Marcus (a deliciously wicked and vampy performance by Eileen Lord) offers three folks who are all murderers -- sniveling heroin addict Buddy (twitchy Ed Brandt), haughty actor Charles Freeman (a perfectly snooty Frank Grace), and brutish champion wrestler Rocco (essayed with snarly aplomb by legendary real-life boxer Jake LaMotta) -- $100,000 thousand dollars each if they manage to stay alive for twenty-four hours in Manhattan. Naturally, there's a catch: Virginia plans to hunt down and kill each and every one of these guys like a pack of wild animals. One-shot movie director Herb Stanley relates the familiar "The Most Dangerous Game"-style premise with surprising style and panache: he keeps the pace rattling along at a speedy clip, develops a substantial amount of tension, makes inspired use of authentically seedy New York City locations, sprinkles in a generous amount of grisly violence, and stages the rousing hunting sequences with tremendous rip-roaring brio (the big back alley confrontation between Rocco and Virginia is an absolute corker with Virginia dressing up as a matador and taking Rocco on like a ferocious charging bull!). Special kudos are in order for the inventive and impressive black and white cinematography: the overhead camera shots, distorted lens, askew angles, and lively hand-held camera-work ensure that this picture remains quite visually exciting throughout. The swinging groovy jazz score likewise does the trick. The much-criticized tacked-on gratuitous female nude inserts and lurid soft-core sex scenes further enhance this film's trashy appeal. Granted, the acting is decidedly hit or miss, with Lord's gleefully nasty portrayal of the cackling and cunning Virginia rating as a definite stand-out. Moreover, the tight 69 minute running time qualifies as another major asset; this picture never drags and certainly delivers the mean'n'lean lowdown scuzzy goods. Highly recommended for exploitation cinema fans.

Enjoyable-Enough take on THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME

[IMOvies · 4 October 2003]

CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT (1968) ** (D: Herb Stanley) Enjoyable-enough take on "The Most Dangerous Game" has an insane woman inviting three men to her NYC apartment and offering each $100,000 if they survive 24 hours in Manhattan with her hunting them down. Wild sex and orgy scenes are utilized to pad things out. Interesting to see shots of NYC, spotting familiar landmarks like the Dakota building.

Not great but not a total waste of time either

[lazarillo · 3 August 2008]

This is an interesting late 60's sexploitation film. It's basically a loose remake of "The Most Dangerous Game" except that the person hunting humans is a sexy woman, her victims are criminals who have gotten away with their crimes (usually murder), and her hunting ground, rather than an island, is all of New York City! Of course, there's also plenty of sexploitation filler. One of the victims, for instance, hides out at a friend's apartment where a seemingly non-stop orgy is taking place. There's also a ridiculous scene where a large-breasted (but not particularly attractive) "actress", who probably couldn't deliver a convincing line reading if you put a gun to her head, is sitting topless in a room carrying on a dialogue with a guy who was obviously not even in the same room. This is obviously "padding", but I don't know that it was "inserts" added later by someone else as was the case with movies like "The Curious Dr. Humpp" because, while that film was originally an Argentinean horror movie, this was obviously always intended for the NYC "grindhouse" sexploitation market.

Obviously the sex scenes add nothing to the plot, but at least this HAS a plot. These 60's sexploitation movies differ from later porno movies in that they often did have some purpose beyond getting the male audience off. Some of the best ones actually took advantage of their "captive audience", throwing in the obligatory sex scenes, but also attempting to actually make a real movie--and sometimes even getting away with things the mainstream movies couldn't (they were kind of like horror movie in that respect). This isn't as creative as something like "Toys Are Not for Children" or "Swinger's Massacre", but it does have appeal beyond the merely prurient.

This could be considered a "roughie", one of the films of this era that combined violence with softcore sex in lieu of hardcore scenes (which were still illegal at the time). These films courted controversy, then and now, because some people believed they were trying to make violence sexy. I like them though, not because the violence is "sexy", but because it tends to make the sex less boring. These movies are generally much less monotonous than the straight sex films that came later. In any event, this is one of your more palatable "roughies" because the violence is aimed almost exclusively at men (which no one can really claim is "sexy") and the victims really deserve it (both for their on screen crimes and the generally inept performances of the actors). This is not great, but it's not a total waste of a time either.

Mildly Entertaining Sexploitation Film

[Michael_Elliott · 11 September 2016]

Confessions of a Psycho Cat (1968)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Virginia Marcus (Eileen Lord) invites three men to her home. She informs them that they're being offered $100,000 each to have her hunt them. If they can survive twenty-four hours then they get the money.

This exploitation film is obviously a take off on THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME and for the most part it's an entertaining movie that fans of these low-budget thrillers should enjoy. The film certainly has some flaws scattered throughout its short 69-minute running time but there are also enough good things that make it worth watching.

One good thing is the performance by Lord who actually delivers a believable character. The scenes dealing with her breakdown are very realistic and I thought this aspect brought quite a bit to the story, which in reality is rather weak. Another good thing were the three victims. Each of them are given a story as to why they're being hunted but also why they need the money. Add in some nice cinematography and you've got an interesting little movie.

As I said, there are some flaws including the typical lack of story that haunts these types of movies. Even at just 69-minutes there are several scenes that just drag on for no other reason that to try and get the running time up. With that said, there's some sexploitation stuff thrown in including some bizarre sex scenes that spice things up a bit.

CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT isn't the greatest movie ever made but it's an interesting take on a familiar story.