The Night of a Thousand Cats (1972) Review

Pray you have nine lives

One of the worst horror movies ever, as agreed upon by pretty much everyone, is Manos: The Hands of Fate . The two central characters of Manos were an egomaniac and a semi-crippled sidekick named Torgo. Night of 1000 Cats is about an egomaniac and a semi-crippled sidekick named Dorgo. Manos was terribly written, acted, filmed and edited. So was 1000 Cats. 1000 Cats came out 6 years after Manos, I can't help but wonder if Manos was some kind of sick inspiration for 1000 Cats.

All that aside, 1000 Cats is a fun little horror flick with a short runtime of just over an hour. There's not a whole lot that makes sense in this movie, but that's part of what makes it fun. One example is in the editing. Many of the cuts are so jarring you don't even have a sense of time. One minute the guy is running on a beach with a babe, the next he's in his remote estate having wine, then he's sitting outside of another woman's house on a motorcycle that just materialized out of nowhere. The cool thing is none of this ruins the movie, it just keeps you on your toes.

Hugo, our jet setting womanizing serial killing cat lover, lives in an old monastery in the middle of the jungle. He lives there with his loyal servant Dorgo who does everything for him from cooking, cleaning, to gardening. He also apparently walks around lighting thousands of candles throughout every corridor of this drafty old place each night. And he of course also lives there with a thousand cats. For whatever reason, he keeps a thousand cats caged up in a giant room and feeds them the remains of his victims. Just not their heads, he keeps those in jars in his trophy room.

Worth Watching?