Runaway Wheelchair! Eleanor Parker in Eye of the Cat

I love this scene! Anything sinister involving wheelchairs sets my camp sense tingling. George C. Scott being chased by an empty wheelchair in 'The Changeling had me rolling in the aisles.

Wait, is that Eleanor Parker in the wheelchair? Or is she the blond in the window?

Eleanor never could drive a stick shift.

What is that film????

Was this the inspiration for the Toonces sketch?

Is that the guy from They Shoot Horses?

Very well filmed, suspenseful. Before they used CGI or special f/x.

Yes. 1969 was the Year of the Cat AND the Horse for Michael.

R4 Eye of the Cat

How do I not know this film? But with thanks to OP, I'll try to remedy that.

Thanks for my first good laugh of the year. I’ll have to seek this movie out.

Thank you, OP

I'm watching "Eye of the Cat" now.

It's just as deliciously campy as you'd imagine.

She should have brought along her harmonica.

According to Amazon, I just bought the last copy they had...

Eleanor is a long way from Salzburg. Serves her right for trying to send those kids to boarding school. There was a missing scene of Rolf and Uncle Max, who are now in a passionate S&M relationship, tampering with the controls.

I just bought the Blu-ray. I’ve never seen the whole film before!

Apparently the original theatrical cut has a supernatural element with the cats and the television cut has more of a paranoia aspect. Interesting!

It’s on YouTube in a pretty good transfer. Skipping through it Michael Sarazin had a shower scene and a bath tub scene. No actually nudity, but the bath scene is interesting as he’s having a conversation with his good looking friend perched on the side of the tub, who then dries his back as he stands in front of the mirror in the nude. Looking forward to watching the whole thing.

Excellent horror film.

San Francisco was a better city then. Cats would never attack purple dressed ladies in wheelchairs now.

R2 The blonde in the window is Gayle Hunnicut, who had more than a passing resemblance to Linda Gray, which is perhaps why she was cast as JR’s love interest in late season Dallas.

She was also the female lead (along with Pamela Franklin) in The Legend of Hell House, which seemed as it played on television nearly every Sunday during the 1970s.

In real life she was, for a time, Lady Jenkins. She even managed to rate a mention in one of Edina’s throwaway, namedroppy comments in AbFab.

Uh, why was the guy afraid of that gorgeous orange tabby? This scene is just beyond. I’m here for the tabby murdering multiple people.

Mother, we have sinned.

OP that was a romp! I must track down this film.

Thanks, OP!

[Quote]A man (Michael Sarrazin) afraid of cats plots with his girlfriend (Gayle Hunnicutt) to kill his rich invalid aunt (Eleanor Parker), whose house is full of cats.

Full film. Thanks, r17.

I always found Michael Sarrazin sexy as fuck.

Michael Sarrazin was truly hot. More to the point, he had a very sexual energy that told you he was screaming good in bed.

^ His lips!

Included in this mash...

Thanks for reminding me of this movie, OP. I was in 6th or 7th grade when we saw it in the theater. It was definitely more of a terror film than psychological thriller as someone mentioned above. The cat was very creepy in the film though he looks like a garden variety tabby in this clip. Michael Sarrazin was my first movie star crush.

R1, Trish Van Devere is the one chased by the wheelchair in THE CHANGELING, not Scott.

EYE OF THE CAT is one of the films where Universal decided to tone down some of the material for TV - the scene where Hunnicutt first visits Sarrazin, he's in bed with a woman in the film, but the TV version cuts any visual of her; the final sequence in the theatrical film has a horde of cats, but the TV version only has one, which makes the whole thing laughable.

I love the title sequence in this film - one of the best parts of it.

Is it time for a remake with Madison Cawthorn?

The cat is adorable.

Greg Abbott needs to see this film (and so does anyone who might push his wheelchair)!

If ya *really* wanna see the Baroness chewin' the scenery...

[quote]According to Amazon, I just bought the last copy they had...

It's certainly not an easy find on streaming services where I live. It's going to take some effort I'm afraid.

I spoke too soon and too stupidly ar R35.

R26 has saved me -- many thanks!

The full movie is available on You Tube in the U.S.

This movie is great (started it too late to finish last night, will finish it today). The scheming hairdresser who roles in Sarazin is one cold woman, and Eleanor Parker’s Aunt Danny must have invented resting bitch face. Aunt Danny is so mean to young brother Luke, who’s adorable and happy to do chores shirtless around the house.

The boys are in a state of undress in several scenes, so I looked up to see if the director might have been gay. His IMDB bio doesn’t mention a wife or children, but I saw that he was married on another page. Not that means anything, and maybe the studio was pushing Sarazin as an ingenue at the time. He’s too skinny by today’s standards of course.

This movie always looked to me like it would be terrifying. Never saw it, though.

Agree, R38...

In the initial scene with Salazar they film his nearly nude body from head to toe,

and repeatedly show Salazar and the other young male actor in various states of undress...

r39 I saw this with my parents when it first came out when I was 8. What I recall: -Cornelia Sharpe's huge nipples -Jennifer O'Neill's wooden acting -Margot Kidder playing the typical cunt she played well -Debralee Scott in a small but warmly memorable role -I barely recall Sarrazin, but... -the standout for every gayling and gay is uncredited model Tony Stephano (featured on the poster). His body was off the hook and either naked or in a Speedo. Here he is naked from one of his frequent pictorials. You're welcome.

If you watch 'Eye of the Cat' critically, you can tell that the character Michael Sarrazin was playing, Wylie, was supposed to have been a gay prostitute catfishing the older woman (Eleanor Parker) for money, but the studio wasn't brave enough to front a film with that storyline. So they made Wylie a heterosexual. A pity.

The fact that Judy Garland's 4th husband, Mark Herron, shows up briefly as Parker's hairdresser, Bellemondo, does help make up for that...

Parker was a stunning beauty.

Why do I feel like there’s some implied incest between Luke and everyone?

All the men were so slim in those days.

Today everyone is FAT or MUSCULAR or both.

I prefer the way men looked in ca. 1968.

Can we get Madison Cawthorn to re-enact this?

I can confirm the Blu-ray has the edited for TV version with new scenes film. However, it looks like a copy of a copy of a VHS tape.

This is actually a fascinating film, but I feel sorry for Eleanor Parker. Just four years before she had been playing the Baroness in "The Sound of Music," and here she was doing this silly horror film.

Given Parker's WTF performance as a raging bitch in the 1966 An American Dream, I'd say that a silly horror film was right up her alley. She always tended to overact.

Michael Sarazin was incredibly hot and I think he did a bathtub scene in "For Pete's Sake" with Babs

[R51] Wonder if he and Babs got it on.

I recall seeing it when the movie was first released and it scared the shit outta me and turned me off cats for the rest of my life. There were dozens of cats in that mansion on Fillmore Street, and when it was finally shown on NBC on Saturday Night At The Movies, it had been edited down to one frickin' kitty. That scene with Sarazzin on the ladder is ludicrous with only a single pussy terrorizing him, but when it was lots of pussies, it was a lot scarier. I've never been able to find the original cut. They chopped it to shreds for tv, and the original was never seen again. And, btw, Sarazzin and Christopher Jones were my prime jerk-off fantasies back then.

Looks cheesy, but I was wrapped up in the suspense of that scene, anyway! Like Pearl White, in a serial, tied to the railroad tracks. Film is the only art or craft where this could be done. Not in a book, or on the stage.

I kind of forgot EP was in The Sound Of Music.. She was past her major stardom at that point. She was somewhat older than Christopher Plummer. A lot of other people could have played her role. I wonder if she was cast by the original director, William Wyler, or by Robert Wise (they both had worked with her in previous films).

Parker was supposed to have appeared in a production of "Pal Joey" about 40+ years ago on Broadway with Edward Villella, but she walked, then Villella walked, and they were replaced with Joan Copeland and Christopher Chadham. A tortuous mess, but Dixie Carter doing "Zip" was well worth it.

I didn't realize Joan Copeland could sing.

R56-Honey, she couldn't.

R57 Could Eleanor Parker sing? The only time I remember her singing was in the TV movie of Hans Brinker, when I was a kid. I don't remember what she sounded like.

R20 How curious! You seem to know a lot about Gayle and that is very exciting to me. She is my father's cousin and will be delighted to hear that there was an online forum discussing her in 2023.

Are there any pics out there before Gayle had her nose bobbed?

R60 I haven't seen any. Possibly in her yearbook, Paschal High School in Fort Worth, class of ca. 1961. She had it done very soon after moving to LA, I believe. Many Hunnicutts have a prominent nose.

Just finished this. A couple of questions:

Is the implication that Danny drowned the kittens? If so, I wish they had killed her.

Also, is there an implication that she sexually abused the nephews? And/or that the boys’ father left their mother for Danny?

[quote]R53: I've never been able to find the original cut. They chopped it to shreds for tv, and the original was never seen again.

It can still be found, if you're sufficiently motivated. Try torrents.

R53, the Blu-ray has the restored original cut.

And R62, incest is implied between Danny and the brothers as well as the brothers themselves. At least my take on it.

You can watch the original version here. The site is safe. We've watched films here a few years now without any problems.

Wonder if it inspired this zany scene from Naked Gun 2 1/2

Scenery chewing at its finest. She was giving off strong Faye Dunaway vibes.

This is great, but my all time favorite wheelchair scene in a movie involves Richard Widmark as a bad guy in a ghoulishly over acted performance. It was a Noir movie and I cannot remember the name of it.

....

That's Danielle Steel's mansion on the right.

Thanks, R69!!!

There was another movie, an ET ripoff, where a kid in a wheelchair went flying over a cliff into a lake. It was posted here a few years ago and I chuckled all day after seeing it. Does anyone have any idea what the name of the movie is?

For you, R72:

R73, thank you for this….lol

Favorite wheelchair movie

[quote]Could Eleanor Parker sing?

She was Bacall lite, r58.

the used wheelchair

I read that Parker sung full voice to the playbacks (of Eileen Farrell) in Interrupted Melody (1955) - the biog. of Marjorie Lawrence (great Australian opera star stricken with polio). So she must have been able to sing, somewhat. I think she sang two solo numbers in the 1969 TV movie, Hans Brinker (as the mother).