THAT DARN CAT! (1965)

Not to be confused with That Darn Human Centipede!, THAT DARN CAT! is the occasionally funny and surprisingly dark story of an indoor-outdoor cat who accidentally crosses path with a kidnap victim who is about to be murdered!  During their brief moments together, the poor woman scratches the letters HEL on the back of her watch and slips it on the cat’s neck.  The cat’s owner (Hayley Mills) notices the message and then before you can say “Tomb Mold should release a funk album called “Give Me Sum of Dat Old Tomb Funk’.”, there’s a pack of FBI agents following that darn motherfucking cat all over town.

THAT DARN CAT! is a fun film.  I got a few laughs out of it and was especially blown away by the impressive supporting cast.  You’ve got everybody from the Bride of Frankenstein (Elsa Lanchester) and vampire hunter Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) to the Riddler (Frank Gorshin) and Trudy Kockenlocker’s dad (William Demarest) up n dis bish!  As far as the leads go, I always enjoy seeing Hayley Mills and Dean Jones during their Disney years and they are both great here, as usual.

Medium pace, great vintage fashions (especially on Hayley), solid acting by a fantastic cast, okay story that should have been sillier and not as dark, vintage cars, zero nudity, zero gore, a few genuine smiles, not enough cat action, zero cheerleaders, not enough wide shots of the Disney backlot, a bus from “Stupidsville”, a bizarre drive-in movie theater that is showing footage of people surfing with no apparent story.

For what it is, THAT DARN CAT! is totally worth watching for anybody interested in such things.  I'd be down to watch it again.  Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, THAT DARN CAT! was the 5th highest-grossing film for the year.

Remake - That Darn Cat (1997)

MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)

A young man with severe mental issues, Joe Buck (Jon Voight), leaves Texas and travels to New York City in hopes of being a long-legged mack daddy. He soon finds out, mainly thanks to his brain having the computing power of 14 Fig Newtons superglued to a half-dead AAA battery, that although he has long legs, he damn sure ain’t no mack daddy! Things happen and before you can say “I should write a YA novel called ‘Donner Party Slumber Party Massacre’ about teens playing a slumber party game where whoever falls asleep first gets eaten.” Ol’ Joe Buck is homeless and starving to death. At the same time, he befriends a predatory street hustler with the confidence building name of Ratso (Dustin Hoffman). Together these two champions go into business capitalizing on Buck’s supposed ability to satisfy women.  Things go about as well as you would expect.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY won three Oscars at the 42nd Academy Awards, including Best Picture.  Looking back on it meow, was MC really the best movie of 1969?  I have no clue.  I haven't seen every movie released in 1969, but I am curious (and will probably update this review in the future) because while it is a good film...I cannot imagine that it was really the absolute best movie of the year.  Then again 1969 was like three or four hundred years ago, so who knows what the fuck was going on back then.  One thing I do know is MIDNIGHT COWBOY is a very interesting time capsule back to a time that looks absolutely foreign as fuck compared to [insert the year you're reading this].  Another interesting tidbit is MIDNIGHT COWBOY is the only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture.  Being "rated X" you're probably expecting to see wall-to-wall big floppy juicy dongs and titties bouncing all over the place, but sadly what little nudity there is was extremely non-erotic and honestly depressing as hell due to (most of) it being in rape flashback nightmares.  Instead, I'm guessing, the X rating was due to overall depressing tone of the film, the homosexual subject matter and the strongly implied sexual abuse Joe suffered as a young child at the hands of his grandmother.

Should you watch MIDNIGHT COWBOY?  Definitely.  100%.  It's still a good film with strong acting, amazing NYC locations and wildly influential on movies and TV shows even still today.  Especially the "I'm walking here!" quote.  That shits been used in everything from FORREST GUMP to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Check it out.

[Update 03/02/2022: This has absolutely nothing to do with the review, but I was just looking through some old newspapers and found a few ads for something called "Midnight Plowboy". I can only assume it's some kind of adult parody of MIDNIGHT COWBOY (or maybe not).  Either way I just wanted to share. Link to newspaper ads.]