Wisely (this time portrayed by Waise Lee from Bullet In The Head) is on the hunt for a mysterious black cat that seems to be behind a few mysterious occurances in Hong Kong. When he eventually finds it he realises that it and it's fellow companions are themselves hunted by an alien force...

We got ourselves a silly and barely serviceable plot but more is not needed in Lam Ngai-Kai's movie. Some movies are pure entertainment and not much plot is required, just enough to hold the movie together for 90 minutes or so. Do you recognize the two names behind the script by the way? It's no others than directors Gordon Chan (Beast Cops) and Chan Hing-Kar (co-director of La Brassiere). Although their work nowadays are of pretty good quality, their script for The Cat is very loosely written. I do have a feeling that most of it was made up as the shooting went along, something that was common for Hong Kong productions at this time (and to some extent even today it seems). If you want to break into any business, you have to start somewhere but I don't think the director's have to be ashamed of being credited on this movie. They've been part in creating a very entertaining and crazy Hong Kong movie.

As a director, Lam Ngai-Kai barely holds the thin plot together. My main complaint has to be that some elements are inserted (and never explained) almost out of nowhere and therefore the attentive part of the audience will be restless since they don't really know what is going on. The movie gets off to a very slow and bad start also. The first 15 minutes is basically the setup for the story and while it's made clear enough, it's soooo slow. After the first really wild scene at the museum, the director finds a nice pace that is thankfully maintained throughout the 80 minute running time. The directing succeeds in delivering entertainment but boy are the dialogue scenes painfully bad! They're badly performed and only serves to bring us some more info regarding the unfolding 'drama'. I was ready to fall asleep but then The Cat displayed what holds this movie together; a series of bizarre and insane effects set pieces. The first one in the musem, where the evil alien force reveals itself, is a very good indication of what we're going to see throughout the movie. The special effects aren't of very high standard but do somehow manage to work within the frame of this movie. The filmmakers and effects team seem to have just done the best they can with the limited resources and that comes off in the final product. It's charming I think. This is not a gory film as such though and it mostly relies on slimey and at times superimposed effects, in other words nowhere near the gorefest known as Story Of Ricky.

Everybody who's seen The Cat remembers one thing and that is hands down the cat vs. the dog fight-scene. It's handled like an elaborate fight set piece and I can't describe how much fun it is to watch. For the most part, the real animals are used (don't worry about animal cruelty, believe me) and through extensive editing and some stop animation work, this scene makes the purchase of the dvd a must in my opinion.

No actors were nominated for their performances here but they didn't deserve it. You can't help thinking how hard it must've been for Waise Lee and Philip Kwok (who also served as the action choreographer) to maintain a straight face while doing these often crazy scenes. Waise Lee is and probably will be most known for his bad guy turns in A Better Tomorrow and Bullet In The Head but he was kind of the weak link in those movies actually. In The Cat he is quite wooden and doesn't seem to be having any fun at all. On the other hand he had to act against nothing most of the time since a fair number of his scenes were ones were effects were added in post-production. Philip Kwok (Hard Boiled) however throws himself mercilessly into the possessed by the evil alien force-role he has here. It's just pure fun watching him unleash the weapons power he has gathered in his hunt for the cat and Philip sure is something people are going to remember from this movie also.

There's not much else to say about Lam Ngai-Kai's movie. With The Cat he created another entertaining entry in his fairly short filmography and in the b-movie part of the world of Hong Kong cinema.

After hearing this strange story, Wisely decided that he needed to find the truth behind all this. He will find more than he was expecting when he will discover that the old man and the young girl are in fact aliens from other space and the small black cat is in fact the bodyguard of the girl. They are hiding on planet Earth from another evil Alien who wants to destroy them.

REVIEW:
Hong Kong movies are well known for their imaginative large scale idea but because of the lack of technology and money they usually make these interesting ideas look sometime cheesy and stupid, even if the whole movie is very entertaining. With my personal experience, I know that common people (Hollywood knowledge only) don't like HK movies because they find them too cheesy and unbelievable. On the other hand most of the people who enjoy HK movies love this innovative and unserious aspects and that's exactly what this movie is all about.

The Cat was directed by Lai-Choi Nam who also directed The Seventh Curse and the well known classic movie Story of Ricky. But unlike these two other movies, instead of trying to find a way to shock the audience with extreme gory scenes, The Cat centers more on the Sci-Fi aspect of the story, kind of a non serious HK X-Files if you want. But the movie still has that special touch that makes you wonder where they always find these crazy ideas.

The Cat doesn't have the most ingenious concept ever and the story even looks more like a dumb pretext to introduce you a very weird scene. Even if the story is easy to follow, the biggest flaw of the movie is the fact that there are a lot of unexplained elements in the movie, especially about the nature of the aliens. It's like the filmmaker didn't bother explain to the audience the multiple why, when and how of the story. I'm guessing that those who like their movie storyline flawless wont be able to stand this movie but if you don't mind the story that doesn't take things too seriously, you will probably have a good time. Just keep in mind that the story is rather a vehicle to bring together the most unusual ideas you will ever see in a Hong Kong Sci-fi movie. Like Peter likes to tell me in these kinds of situation: "Don't Ask!"

This is a B movie so don't expect the most incredible actor performance ever. Most of the acting was kind of cheesy and funny but I think that was a good thing, a movie like that with a serious tone would have probably ruined the whole thing. Out of all the characters, the most interesting one was the main character Wisely, he was a kind of modern action Sherlock Holmes. As for the rest of the cast, they were mostly forgettable characters unfortunately. The one who had some potential was the Alien girl with her cat, but since there's almost no info about her background or true nature, it was kind of hard to really understand all of her motivation and feeling.

Sci-fi, action, comedy and horror are elements that a lot of Hong Kong movies have tried to mix together and it seem that only a few directors have achieve a successful result. In my opinion The Cat doesn't belong in the successful category, of course it's not a bad movie but I don't think that any of these genres have been exploited to the max. Too many details are unanswered in the Sci-fi aspect to really understand it, the action is there but nothing that we have never seen before, ok except the cat and dog fight. As for the comedy and horror elements, both of them were present but none of them really impressed me.

The special effects were probably the most interesting thing, because of the very limited budget Im really wondering how they manage to get all these effects done. The most spectacular scene is of course that much talked about scene were a cat (the Alien) and a super dog fight each other. I wont say too many details, but as many people before me have said, just for this only scene makes a viewing of the movie worth it. There are also a couple of nice gory scenes, consisting of Alien eating human bodies and slimy unidentified thing attacking humans. Most of the effects were good for a low budget production, but don't expect to see something like in Story of Ricky.

Even if the movie is far from being perfect it still have some memorable moments and also contains enough interesting elements to keep the interest of any HK movie addict for a whole viewing. If you like Hong Kong movies for their crazy ideas and concept, The Cat is a movie you really have to see, but if you are annoyed by the cheesy factor in HK movies, then stay away from it at all cost.

THE DVD:
[Region Free] The weirdest aspect of this release is the cover; don't ask me why they used a picture of the American movie Bride of Chucky for the cover and Carrie II for the side label. The transfer is widescreen and is far from being what I call a good transfer. A lot of burns and scratches all along the movie, still very watchable but hard to believe it's a DVD. The sound is DD 5.1 only in mandarin, which Im pretty sure it was not the original audio track. The English subs are decent, generally a good timing but a couple of grammatical errors. Still better than a VCD, this WA release is to my knowledge the only available version of The Cat, but the DVD is really cheap anyway. A good thing is that the release comes in a regular plastic DVD case, unlike some other WA release which comes in a small cheap transparent and easily breakable plastic DVD case.