20 Exploitation Films You Must See Before You Die

Aided by a fine cast that includes Patrick Magee (A Clockwork Orange), David Warbeck (The Beyond), Al Cliver (Devil Hunter), Mimsy Farmer (Four Flies On Grey Velvet) and Dagmar Lassander (House By The Cemetery), Italian schlockmeister Lucio Fulci foregoes zombies in favour of a “freely adapted” version of the Edgar Allan Poe story that’s inexplicably set in England.

Capable of hypnotizing drivers (causing them to crash), starting house fires and asphyxiating horny teenagers by trapping them in an airless room, the eponymous feline somehow shares a psychic connection with Magee, who’s able to lead the police to the location of one murder but unable to keep the cat from reoffending.

This is a very silly film, never more demented than when Warbeck, believed dead, suddenly reappears in the final reel, having faked his death to fool the animal. It works: the cat eventually leads the cops to the cellar where Magee, who’s gone barking mad, is keeping Farmer. Why wasn’t The Breed (2006) this much fun?