Last week, I watched Norman Tokar’s The Cat From Outer Space
and was surprised to discover that it starred not Dean Jones but Ken
Berry, another leading man from Disney’s Herbie franchise. The next DVD
to arrive in my mailbox was Robert Stevenson’s That Darn Cat!,
and it made me smile to see Jones in the lead in that movie. I don’t
know if I had my Herbie stars mixed up or my Disney cat flicks mixed up,
but either way, it felt as though the world had righted itself.
Jones plays Zeke Kelso, the FBI agent who leads the investigation when
plucky Patti Randall (Hayley Mills) reports her suspicion that her
drifter of a cat, whom she calls D.C. (short for “Darn Cat”), may have a
crucial clue that could lead to the bank teller whose kidnapping is
headline news. The reason for this mental leap is the watch Patti finds
around D.C.’s neck in place of his collar, particularly what looks to be
the beginning of the word “HELP” scratched into the back. So begins a
curious partnership as Zeke channels his resources into trailing this
felicitous feline on his nighttime rounds.
Mills is sweet and
energetic, if a tad on the daffy side, while her older sister Ingrid
(Dorothy Provine) is rather snippy. She has good reasons for it, though;
Zeke sets up shop in her room while she’s out, leaving her confused and
under suspicion of untoward behavior by nosy neighbor Mrs. MacDougal.
This sour busybody is played by Elsa Lanchester, who I recognized right
away as indignant nanny Katie Nana from Mary Poppins. She is, if
possible, even more comically unpleasant here, and the efforts of her
disgruntled husband (William Demarest), who has a habit of turning off
his hearing aid to tune her out, to undermine her are quite
entertaining.
Ingrid also has to deal with the amorous advances of slimy carpool driver Gregory Benson (Roddy McDowall), who reminds me of Big Bang Theory’s
Howard Wolowitz. There’s a part of me that feels sorry for this
socially awkward Brit who seems cowed by an overbearing mother, but he’s
too generally rude to stay in my sympathies long, and the scene in
which he tries to seduce Ingrid with an explanation of how to properly
prepare a duck for dinner is just plain skeezy. McDowall, incidentally,
is in both this movie and The Cat from Outer Space, perhaps another reason I got them confused.
There’s really nothing all that remarkable about D.C. He’s basically a
typical cat with a touch of wanderlust and a knack for knowing when he
is being followed. While Lanchester and Demarest are probably the
biggest sources of comic relief here, there are some funny scenes of
D.C. thwarting those who want to use him as an “informant.” The
antagonism between him and Zeke, who goes into sneezing fits whenever he
is nearby, adds to the humor. Additionally, while he’s only in the
movie for a short time, the always-funny Ed Wynn is a hoot as a frazzled
jewelry store owner.
While I generally found the movie
engaging, I had a hard time really connecting with Patti and especially
Ingrid, so when they were in scenes apart from Zeke or D.C., I usually
found my attention wandering a bit. Still, this is a fun flick with a
swingin’ Sherman Brothers theme song that Bobby Darin sings with all the
swagger he can muster. As someone who has been known to affectionately
utter the title phrase a few times myself, I think That Darn Cat! is darn entertaining.
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