Review of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973) by Deb S — 21 Aug 2010
"Well, if she doesn't look as fresh as a daisy next to an outhouse"!
"The man who loved Cat Dancing" is different from most westerns in that it is focused on relationships. This may not be surprising, in the light of the fact that the novel it is based on was written by a woman. Burt Reynolds plays a train robber whose gang is disrupted by the intrusion of a woman, the aristocratic Catherine née Cat Crocker (British actress Sarah Miles) who is fleeing an unhappy marriage.
Catherine's husband hires on a tracker (Lee J. Cobb) to find his wife who he believes is kidnapped. You never get the impression that Crocker (George Hamilton) isn't a decent enough guy in his own right only that his wife doesn't love him enough to want to stay married. With Jay Grobart's gang, Catherine gets more than she's bargained for, having to fend off the lecherous likes of Bo Hopkins' Billy, and the brutish Jack Warden's Dawes and later some renegade Indians.
Meanwhile Grobard himself is a driven man on the trail to retrieve his two children from a Shoshone tribe, left behind after he killed the man who raped his wife, the 'Cat Dancing' character of the film's title. We also follow Catherine's emotional changes. She is at first simply running away from a husband she does not love. She later has sex with a man who has protected her, and is then raped by a sociopath.
The scenery in this movie was outstanding with excellent performances by Jack Warren and Lee J. Cobb.
Worth checking out...wait a minute...just two people on my friend's list have seen this one???
This review of The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973) was written by Deb S on 21 Aug 2010.
The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing has generally received mixed reviews.
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