This is a slow burning murder mystery that keeps you guessing till the end. Perhaps the final reveal is a bit quick, especially if you are used to Columbo style re-enactments of the murder, so you need to pay attention. As usual there are plenty of possible murder suspects to choose from, or perhaps it's even suicide. Although based on a play (by Arnold Ridley, more commonly known for his role in Dad's Army) this does not have the usual hallmarks, such as the action being set primarily in one location. Well worth watching. A picture credit for the cat, an on-screen natural, would have been welcome though.
11 Reviews
Cat House
richardchatten31 March 2020
Made in the sixties but with a distinctly thirties feel (except that in the thirties it would have taken place in a house the size of Blenheim). 'B' movie workhorse Montgomery Tully was still working in black & white and thirty shillings was still a substantial sum of money when this diverting little potboiler with a predominately female cast was dashed off (it even includes a very rare film appearance by the sorely missed Joan Sanderson).
No prizes for guessing who the prime candidate for the rat poison one of the characters buys is!
No prizes for guessing who the prime candidate for the rat poison one of the characters buys is!
That set the cat among the pigeons!
ulicknormanowen21 March 2021
A deliciously old-fashioned murder mystery ,with a threesome of mischievous old ladies who find it hard to make ends meet (a problem which is still relevant today when old people whose pension is too meager have to resort to charity organisations )but whose pride is intact and who would never,in a month of sundays ,accept any hand-out.
Their landlords was a generous man who did not force them to settle the arrears on their rent;but he's just passed away and his widow is a tartar , who treats her stepdaughter like Cinderella and ruthlessly raises her old tenants' rent.Her cruelty knows no bounds :she goes as far as to kill the cute kitten , adored by her mistress,one of the grannies, and everyone.
When the hateful woman (Vanda Godsell is incredibly wicked ) dies ,the viewer heaves a sigh of relief ,but the movie becomes a whodunit : he suspects the old ladies, the jeweler (who is also the stepdaughter's uncle) ,the young girl ,her boyfriend....all have motives,in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie.Although not to be mentioned in the same breath as the queen of crime's works, the screenplay is well written ,and acting is very good.
Their landlords was a generous man who did not force them to settle the arrears on their rent;but he's just passed away and his widow is a tartar , who treats her stepdaughter like Cinderella and ruthlessly raises her old tenants' rent.Her cruelty knows no bounds :she goes as far as to kill the cute kitten , adored by her mistress,one of the grannies, and everyone.
When the hateful woman (Vanda Godsell is incredibly wicked ) dies ,the viewer heaves a sigh of relief ,but the movie becomes a whodunit : he suspects the old ladies, the jeweler (who is also the stepdaughter's uncle) ,the young girl ,her boyfriend....all have motives,in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie.Although not to be mentioned in the same breath as the queen of crime's works, the screenplay is well written ,and acting is very good.
Stagey but has enough twists and turns to satisfy its audience.
jamesraeburn200317 September 2021
Warning: Spoilers
A wealthy man dies leaving his estate in trust to his teenage daughter Mary (played by Natasha Pyne). The trustees are her stepmother Eleanor ( played by Vanda Godsell) and her uncle, the local jeweller Henry Fawcett (Mervyn Johns). Eleanor torments everyone around her, not least the three old ladies (played by Ellen Pollock, Mary Merral and Amy Dalby) who live in her lodging house by dramatically increasing their rent and poisoning the pet cat of one of them. They decide to get revenge on Eleanor by poisoning the bottle of whisky, which is kept locked in a cupboard and they know she is in the habit of stealing from. But, they ditch the plan after two of them get cold feet and replace it with another bottle having poured the poisoned one away. However, after the ladies have returned from a church social evening, Eleanor is found dead, poisoned. The police have plenty of suspects, including Mary whom had bought rat poison on the fatal day. Then there is her boyfriend, Peter Parsons (played by Gregory Philips) whom Eleanor disliked intensely and caused him to lose his job at Fawcett's jewellery shop.
Although it betrays its stage origins, the producer-director and writing team of Maurice J Wilson and Montgomery Tully do quite well in preserving the intrigue and tension from an obscure old stage play, 'Tabitha', by Arnold Ridley and Mary Cathcart Borer, on which this British 'B'-pic is based. There are enough red herrings and twists and turns to hold an audience's interest while the solution is quite surprising and based on an ironic twist of fate and unintended consequences. The veteran leading ladies and Ealing veteran Mervyn Johns hold the picture together while the support from the younger members of the cast is adequate. The b/w camerawork from Geoffrey Faithfull is atmospheric, particularly in the opening shots of a funeral procession at a pretty English small town church that helps to overcome the limitations of the largely indoorsy, studio bound settings.
Although it betrays its stage origins, the producer-director and writing team of Maurice J Wilson and Montgomery Tully do quite well in preserving the intrigue and tension from an obscure old stage play, 'Tabitha', by Arnold Ridley and Mary Cathcart Borer, on which this British 'B'-pic is based. There are enough red herrings and twists and turns to hold an audience's interest while the solution is quite surprising and based on an ironic twist of fate and unintended consequences. The veteran leading ladies and Ealing veteran Mervyn Johns hold the picture together while the support from the younger members of the cast is adequate. The b/w camerawork from Geoffrey Faithfull is atmospheric, particularly in the opening shots of a funeral procession at a pretty English small town church that helps to overcome the limitations of the largely indoorsy, studio bound settings.
Absorbing film
jonesus25 April 2022
I watched this film expecting it to be dull and boring but it held my interest right through to the end. It was made at Twickenham Film Studios and they did not go far for the external scenes as the Police station shown is Twickham police station. I think the young actor playing the shop boy also had minor singing career. For a low budget film it is in my opinion worth watching.
The cat is dead; long live the cat.
philip-davies315 April 2020
A quiet and an unassuming but superbly polished British 'whodunnit' with charming and most effective performances, this engaging entertainment, concerning the loss of an elderly lady's kitten and the bitter - but mercifully balmed - consequences of that small tragedy, will completely bore and baffle anyone under the age of about fifty.
Unless your tastes were informed by an older and now almost entirely extinct set of cultural values - as were my own - this little cinematic treat will convey little beyond the sort of tedium small children bridle at when forced to listen to adult conversation. Every generation is a degeneration of the human spirit. Bright minds and good works there still are, and thank goodness for them; nevertheless, the general quality of life becomes ever nastier. This is because there is more - of everything, naturally, which of course includes also more that is bad.
What there is of human fineness is consequently ever more thinly spread across an ever vaster and more insatiable range of need. So it is that between this little Island of Britain and the looming masses of burgeoning China an impassable historical gulf is being set, which is euthanising the nostalgia of a World, our little world, which is still so familiar to some of us, and yet which is ever more faintly perceived - - - as if phantoms were flickering into their final oblivion over the cosy hearth of their dying memories, as the storm of change rages outside. This sense is a sure sign of the future's totalitarian intolerance of the past, and it's radical aversion to it. In an age of relentless global progress many delicate survivals will be vaporised by the great air-brush of history, and it will be as if they and their antediluvian world never were.
The survival of the Young chiefly depends upon the extinction of the Old: therefore such revenants must be impatiently and summarily swept away - for this is the hygiene of an era of Pandemics that sweeps away all the baffling contradictions of contrary old ways, so that the New World can pretend to it's own brief authority over the same fundamentally unruly Nature. Hence the impatience of many with what they see as a morbid interest in old dead things, like sentimentalised kittens and the frail passions of a powerless past; hence also humanity's equally morbid haste to assimilate itself to the indifferent future that is being brought upon us all.
The cat is dead; long live the cat.
Unless your tastes were informed by an older and now almost entirely extinct set of cultural values - as were my own - this little cinematic treat will convey little beyond the sort of tedium small children bridle at when forced to listen to adult conversation. Every generation is a degeneration of the human spirit. Bright minds and good works there still are, and thank goodness for them; nevertheless, the general quality of life becomes ever nastier. This is because there is more - of everything, naturally, which of course includes also more that is bad.
What there is of human fineness is consequently ever more thinly spread across an ever vaster and more insatiable range of need. So it is that between this little Island of Britain and the looming masses of burgeoning China an impassable historical gulf is being set, which is euthanising the nostalgia of a World, our little world, which is still so familiar to some of us, and yet which is ever more faintly perceived - - - as if phantoms were flickering into their final oblivion over the cosy hearth of their dying memories, as the storm of change rages outside. This sense is a sure sign of the future's totalitarian intolerance of the past, and it's radical aversion to it. In an age of relentless global progress many delicate survivals will be vaporised by the great air-brush of history, and it will be as if they and their antediluvian world never were.
The survival of the Young chiefly depends upon the extinction of the Old: therefore such revenants must be impatiently and summarily swept away - for this is the hygiene of an era of Pandemics that sweeps away all the baffling contradictions of contrary old ways, so that the New World can pretend to it's own brief authority over the same fundamentally unruly Nature. Hence the impatience of many with what they see as a morbid interest in old dead things, like sentimentalised kittens and the frail passions of a powerless past; hence also humanity's equally morbid haste to assimilate itself to the indifferent future that is being brought upon us all.
The cat is dead; long live the cat.
Enjoyable
scottbarry-8835827 September 2021
Old-fashioned murder mystery
Leofwine_draca9 April 2020
Warning: Spoilers
WHO KILLED THE CAT? is a slightly oddball, long forgotten British murder mystery with an old-fashioned feel to it; hard to believe this was released during the Swinging Sixties. A trio of pleasant old ladies find themselves persecuted by a younger lady, thus setting up a plot which involves poisoning and the titular moggy. It's a slow and talky affair, although not without charm; elder ladies have always done well in British cinema, from THE LADYKILLERS to CLOCKWISE, and so they do well here. Mervyn Johns pops up as the chemist and Conrad Phillips the detective; the whole thing is short enough to never run out of steam while keeping you guessing at the same time.
Holds attention all the way to the end.
plan9911 August 2023
This looked like a mid 1950s film rather that one of 1966 especially as it was not in colour but the story suited this look. The old ladies were great and in the mould of an Ealing film and I half expected Alastair Sim or George Cole to pop up at any time.
An excellent "who dunnit" which keeps the audience guessing all the way to the end and very well cast possibly with "William Tell" being it it to attract some more cinema ticket buyers.
A must see for lovers of classic 1950s mystery films even it it was made in 1966. I changed my mind several times as to who the guilty party was and still got it wrong.
An excellent "who dunnit" which keeps the audience guessing all the way to the end and very well cast possibly with "William Tell" being it it to attract some more cinema ticket buyers.
A must see for lovers of classic 1950s mystery films even it it was made in 1966. I changed my mind several times as to who the guilty party was and still got it wrong.
Lacking in suspense
malcolmgsw10 January 2020
The most notable thing about this film is that the play upon which it is based was co authored by Arnold Ridley,Private Godfrey of Dads Army.The problem with this film is that there is rarely any tension.When it starts to get interesting it ends in a very lame climax.
A poorly made murder mystery.
Sylvester6 January 2000
"Who Killed The Cat?" is a poorly made, cheap and virtually plotless murder mystery. It was made in the days when it was still the norm to show double bills in British cinemas. Such "B" features were churned out by the smaller studios as programme fillers and have now, mercifully, been consigned to oblivion. The film starts promisingly enough with a funeral, but that is about all the action you get. The rest is mostly talk.
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