Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 7:7	Budget Small

Cats that turn into women who want to have sex with men to create the "Great Litter"? Genius.

We open to several long cuts of Cleo the cat (played by Esmeralda Huffhines) running through the fields, walking down the road and generally being a cat. After the credits we cut to the an attic where an old woman is having a conversation with a statue of a black cat. The conversation goes badly for the old girl as she ends up killing herself so that the statue can have enough power to transform suicidal cats in to the naked catgirls of the title. Coincidently Ralph is in close proximity to Cleo's transformation into human Cleo (Carrie Vanston) and is immediately smitten by her. But before nature can take its course, Ralph teams up with Warren and Cleo makes her way back to the attic where she teams up with other catgirls. The catgirls quickly figure out how to put on clothes, learn a few phrases in English and other things to move the plot along. In short order Warren and Ralph come across a couple of bodies with cat scratches, not a lot of blood and big smiles. We find out a lot sooner than the guys what happened to them. At any rate soon Cleo and Ralph run into each other again and fall in love. The usual romantic comedy scenes then occur with the catgirls helping Cleo get ready for the date by doing her makeup and offering such helpful hints as "do a lot of sniffing". Ralph fares little better with Warren's advice. As a confrontation builds between the statue and the lovers, more and more cats kill themselves and become human to help create the great litter. Just as things are about to get serious, Warren and the cat goddess form an alliance and bring the dead guys back to life, turn the girls back to cats (off camera) and generally save the day.

There is not a lot of bad things that you can say about this movie. Not because there aren't weaknesses but because this is the filmmakers only film credit. They made this movie out of the blue and disappeared back into it just as quickly. While this is not too unusual,the difference here is that this is actually a pretty good film. It takes itself seriously enough to be entertaining but not so seriously as to be obnoxious. Clearly we are not talking a highbrow concept here but still it is evident that they took great care in the making.

I have said many times that beginning film makers usually don't have a lot of money but they should have a lot of time. Time to work on the story, put together a story board, rehearse the actors, scout locations. Pre-planning lets them get the most out of a limited budget. An example here is the use of a wide angle lens. There was not a lot of distortion in the lens that they used and the camera angle limited it even more so in the tight interior shots lines were straight, faces were not misshapen (except a little on purpose) and there was a nice sense of space around the actors. The wide angle was also used effectively for motion. Characters would start out close to the camera and when the walked away there was an exaggerated sense of speed. Several scenes were staged with the wide angle in mind (like the shot of Cleo the Cat and the old woman above) and they took the time to set the camera up properly.

Too often when you have a great title, you don't spend a lot of time on sub plots. Typically these movies will feature large amount of footage of people driving, walking, running, looking pensive or repeating themselves. So while the plot for Catgirls is straightforward, we get some nice little side trips. The romance between the male and female lead, the way the two of them prepare for the date, the discovery of the dead bodies with the big smiles on their faces are all done with a certain hit and run mentality. Jokes are presented and then we move on. Warren is shown as being odd, but we are not beaten over the head with his weirdness. Cleo's humanization is nicely handled. Every interaction with Ralph shows her progressively better at being human, though the scenes often ended with her behaving very cat like, i.e., chasing a mouse around the yard.

One of the ways they saved money is by shooting the night scenes during the day and making everything look dark by underexposing a touch and using a dark cyan filter (probably the standard 80a). At times this was annoying but was a better choice than actually trying to shoot at night when you can't afford proper lights. The copy I found was in full format and was probably taken from a video source so lots of detail was lost. The movie certainly was shot on video and in 1997 video quality was not really great, so this may be about as good as the movie ever looked though at times it is too dark to see any detail or, for that matter, anything. Troma purchased the movie (or at least the distribution rights) and dumped a lot of their crap advertising on it, but they had nothing to do with the creation of the movie. So while this is technically a Troma movie, it is far more subtle and amusing than a typical Troma feature.

The film's main running gag is that cats are offing themselves to become human and mate with men. So we hear about cats running in front of cars but mostly we see these cats (clearly oversized rag dolls) flinging themselves off rooftops and over bridges. This is usually followed by the transformation (which happens off screen) into a naked human girl (marked by a transition of cat noises to human moans and groans). For a cheap film they do this a lot, in fact I'd say about a dozen times and most of the women appear nude briefly. There are a couple of casting scenarios here. The traditional one would be where the casting director does some advertising, calls up some agencies, arranges auditions, etc. Yeah, those things cost money. The second scenario is to head to the local strip club where you won't have any trouble finding women who'll show their tits in a movie for a hundred bucks and a film credit. I gotta believe these guys went with the second scenario. There is a fair bit of nudity in the film and while we aren't talking about supermodels here, the women are rather attractive. The single sex scene is played mostly for laughs. At least I think it is, personally I find a women bouncing up and down on a guy while screaming "meow" more amusing than arousing. On a related note, the catgirls version of "heat" is very tame. It is much more in line with a cat's "I'm glad to see you" behavior. Cats truly in heat do things that would make a pornstar either blush or take notes.

Warren spends a lot of time futzing with a backpack that has tubes,hoses and a spinning sensor that is supposed to be able to sense cats(the Ghostbuster's reference is not subtle). We never find out what he does once he finds these cats, which is probably just as well. Oddly the device seems to work. He is able to find a strong signal just before the cats change. In the end it turns out that Warren is one-quarter cat (on his grandmother's side) which provides an explanation as to why the device "works", Warren simply can sense the cats.

So essentially these guys made a movie with no prior experience and avoided nearly all the pitfalls that have sunk so many of their brethren. You need only look at Donald Farmer if you want to see someone who should know better but doesn't quite. Normally I would give this a 4 cup rating but again because these guys made a solid little movie with no budget and no experience they really deserve that extra cup. The movie is not without its flaws and too often the "day for night" shooting is so under exposed you can't really see what is going on, but the filmmakers did more things right than wrong.

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