The Big Cat (1949)

Director: PHIL KARLSON. Screenplay: Morton Grant, Dorothy Yost. Story: Morton Grant. Photographed in Technicolor by W. Howard Greene. Technicolor color consultant: Natalie Kalmus. Film editor: Harvey Manger. Music composed by Paul Sawtell and directed by Irving Friedman. 2nd unit director: Noel Smith. Associate Technicolor color consultant: Francis C. Cugat. Special effects: Roy W. Seawright. Art director: Frank Durlauf. Set decorations: Ben W. Bone, Armor Marlowe. Production manager: James T. Vaughn. Assistant director: Ridgeway Callow. 2nd assistant director: William Nolte. Hair styles: Joan St Oegger, Gwen Van Upp. Make-up: Ern Westmore, Jack Pierce. Sound technician: Victor Appel. Producer: William Moss.William Moss Pictures, Inc. Copyright 19 May 1949 by Pathe Industries, Inc. Released in the U.S.A. through Eagle-Lion, in the U.K. through G.F.D. U.S. release: April 1949. U.K. release: 26 December 1949. Australian release by J. Arthur Rank through British Empire Films, Sydney release at the Capitol: 24 March 1951 (1 week only). Australian length: 7,009 feet (78 minutes). U.S. length: 76 minutes. U.K. length: 6,721 feet (74½ minutes).SYNOPSIS: 1932 — depression and drought in the Rocky Mountain country — and a killer cougar!COMMENT: Eagle-Lion films often enjoyed a perpetual half-life, hanging on through independent exchanges and the punishment of amateur projectionists, until the prints were so patched and shredded they literally fell apart. Very few of the movies in the independents' catalogs boasted any sort of color, let alone Technicolor, the acknowledged king of the rainbow, against which all other systems were regarded as second-rate; so The Big Cat was pretty near top of the popularity poll with schools, clubs and home cinemas that had no access to the output of Hollywood's major studios.Superbly photographed on natural locations in the Rocky Mountain country of Utah, capably directed and acted, "The Big Cat" has enough predictable action to satisfy the average fan. What it doesn't have is an original story. Once the characters are established — and they are a conventional enough lot — it is possible to stay three or four jumps ahead of the plot. But when you're looking at color for the first time on the kitchen wall or the roll-up screen, it's the color that counts — and Duke Greene, a veteran Technicolor cameraman knows his palettes — nothing else really matters.

Young Lon McCallister has trouble making ends meet in depression-era Philadelphia, so he returns to his dead mother's rural hometown. There, he becomes involved with the town folk's soap opera past, and catches the eye of Peggy Ann Garner. Due to drought, a menacing cougar is on the scene, making the outdoors very dangerous for the movie's characters...There is a lot of fighting, with and without the cougar; but, that's not the film's most interesting feature. More interesting is that the movie features a few "child stars" past their "Hollywood Prime." On hand: Lon McCallister, from 1943's "Stage Door Canteen" and others, Peggy Ann Garner from 1945's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and others, Skip Homeier from 1944's "Tomorrow, the World" and others, and Gene Reynolds from 1938's "Boys Town" and others. Mr. Reynolds won huge fame later, as a producer ("M*A*S*H")."The Big Cat" and the family dog win big acting honors. **** The Big Cat (4/49) Phil Karlson ~ Lon McCallister, Peggy Ann Garner, Preston Foster, Forrest Tucker

**SPOILERS** With the great depression and a disastrous drought all the people in this little area of Southern Utah needed was a deadly mountain lion on the loose killing their cattle to make them forget their troubles.Having a $150.00 reward, a lot of money back in 1933, on it's head everyone in the area were out to get the deadly feline but with no success because the lion was always one step, or paw, ahead of them. Into the mix comes young Danny Turner, Lon McCallister, from Philidelphia looking for a job at the Tom Egger place. Tom, Preston Foster, sent Danny a letter about three months ago about Danny helping him with his work in the tan bark business but since them Tom's tan bark business went kaput. Since there came on the tan bark market a new and cheaper synthetic tan bark that put poor Tom out of business. Danny shocked at Tom's situation, as well as his own, decides to stay with him and help him gun down the killer mountain lion for the reward money. Money that can give Tom a jump start to fill his orders of tan bark and get him, and Danny, back on his feet again. Meanwhile Tom had been feuding with his neighbor Gil Hawks, Forrest Tucker, for over twenty years a feud that started over Lucy, Gils's, sister, who Tom wanted to marry. The feud got so out of hand that Lucy soon fled east to get away from both her brother Gil and her lover Tom and to keep from ending up dead by getting caught in the crossfire of these two lunatics. In Philidelphia Lucy met the man that she married and with whom had Danny but she and Tom secretly carried a torch for each other .Now with both his parents dead and no work to be found Danny could only go west to Utah and Tom for work and for someone who would treat his as if he were his own son. The fighting in the movie between Tom and Gil is so off-the-wall and outrageous that you wonder how they both survived all that time without ending up dead behind bars or in a loony bin. With guns and axes and chains the two were going at it in what seemed like a crazed daily ritual. The appearance of the killer cat was the only thing that kept the two from really going at it and finishing themselves off for good long before the movie ended. Danny also got the two Hawks boys Jim & Wid, Skip Homeier & Gene Reynolds, mad at him when pretty Doris Cooper, Peggy-Ann Garner, went wild over the young city boy even before she ever laid eyes on him. This showed how desperate Doris was for a normal young man who wasn't part of the crowd that she had to deal with in that part of of state. Trying to track down the mountain lion Tom shoots a buck for food and after Danny, who couldn't bring himself to gun down the buck, dragged it back to Tom's place but forgot to take Tom's 30/30 rifle that he used to track down the panther. With the deadly cougar picking up the scent and then trying to eat the hanging buck carcass Tom foolishly tries to shoot the cat with a .22 rifle. A .22 is useless against a large wild animal like a mountain lion and Tom gets killed by it when it ambushes him . Danny feeling guilty about Tom's death, since he left the gun that would have done in the cat back in the woods, goes out on his own and finds it's lions lair. With the unexpected help of a member of the hated Hawk family, their dog Spike, Danny has it out with and finally finishes off the elusive and deadly killer.

Operating with a limited in number but generally talented group of eight actors, director Phil Karlson, soon to be known for his essays into noir, here creates an engrossing adventure film set in 1933 depression and drought wracked southern Utah, and incorporates many of the elements which later will prove vital to his deserved reputation as an important narrator of urban crime. Residents of a small secluded valley are being tormented by a large mountain lion which, due to a shortage of water, has invaded their region to prey upon livestock, and the bounty for the beast of $150 is coveted by two long-feuding neighbours, one of whom, Tom Eggers (Preston Foster) provides a place to live for a city-bred young man (Lon McCallister), the son of the former love of his host and also the nephew of Eggers' rival, Gil Hawks (Forrest Tucker). The well-crafted scenario includes elements of romance, suspense and humour to the basic plot, and a certain darkness of tone has raised the work above most others of its stamp, with crisp editing (Karlson and Harvey Manger) prevailing, and we enjoy particularly fine performances from Foster and McCallister, with a pleasingly large role for veteran character actor Irving Bacon, a standout as a farmer doubling as a preacher.