Wealthy Ella Venable (Catherine Lacey) makes a new will leaving everything to her husband Walter (Andre Morell). Ella is clubbed to death by her servant, Andrew (Andrew Crawford), and helped by Walter and the housekeeper, Clara (Freda Jackson), he buries her body in a shallow grave in the woods. The chief witness to all this is Ella's pet cat, Tabatha, which embarks on spying on and terrorising them and they decide to trap and destroy it. After the cat jumps on Walter in the cellar weakening his heart and confining him to bed, Ella's niece, Elizabeth (Barbara Shelley), arrives at the house along with Walter's unscrupulous relatives; his brother Edgar (Richard Warner); his son Jacob (William Lucus) and his wife Louise (Vanda Godsell). Walter instructs Edgar, Jacob and Louise to find another will that exists leaving Ella's entire fortune to Elizabeth - whom they later plan to kill - and to trap and kill the cat. But, Tabatha outwits the plotters every time and one by one the cat exacts vengeance on those that killed its mistress.
A Hammer horror in all but name - the company removed its name from the credits due to legal quota reasons - which supported The Curse Of The Werewolf on the double bill in 1961. It is masterfully directed by John Gilling who succeeds in wringing suspense and tension from a daft plot. There are some neat shocks - the death scenes shot from the cat's point of view using a distorted lens are particularly effective. Arthur Grant's atmospheric black and white camera-work with its use of shadow and Mikos Theodorakis' jumpy score add to the spooky old dark house setting leading up to a shocking climax.
Performances are good all round with Warner, Lucus and Godsell suitably shifty and untrustworthy as the good for nothing, self serving relatives while Conrad Philips (William Tell) is standout as the newspaper man who suspects that the family are up to no good from the word go. Andre Morell is good as the villainous Walter Venable although it is far from his best Hammer performance. I personally prefer him as Dr Watson in The Hound Of The Baskervilles or, better still, Sir James Forbes in The Plague Of The Zombies while Barbara Shelley offers a strong performance as a typical Hammer heroine.
If the film has any flaws it is that the giggles do occasionally set in when the actors go over the top in their hysterical reaction to the cat. The police inspector (Alan Wheatley) rather neatly sums it up: "Things really come to pass when a cat terrorises a house full of adults."
A Hammer horror in all but name - the company removed its name from the credits due to legal quota reasons - which supported The Curse Of The Werewolf on the double bill in 1961. It is masterfully directed by John Gilling who succeeds in wringing suspense and tension from a daft plot. There are some neat shocks - the death scenes shot from the cat's point of view using a distorted lens are particularly effective. Arthur Grant's atmospheric black and white camera-work with its use of shadow and Mikos Theodorakis' jumpy score add to the spooky old dark house setting leading up to a shocking climax.
Performances are good all round with Warner, Lucus and Godsell suitably shifty and untrustworthy as the good for nothing, self serving relatives while Conrad Philips (William Tell) is standout as the newspaper man who suspects that the family are up to no good from the word go. Andre Morell is good as the villainous Walter Venable although it is far from his best Hammer performance. I personally prefer him as Dr Watson in The Hound Of The Baskervilles or, better still, Sir James Forbes in The Plague Of The Zombies while Barbara Shelley offers a strong performance as a typical Hammer heroine.
If the film has any flaws it is that the giggles do occasionally set in when the actors go over the top in their hysterical reaction to the cat. The police inspector (Alan Wheatley) rather neatly sums it up: "Things really come to pass when a cat terrorises a house full of adults."