Noticing that every other reviewer of "The Cat from Outer Space" broke down and gave it five stars, I happily hurl myself on the bandwagon. Vive la conformite, as they say in France. Even though I didn't list it as "Fit for Friday evening," it's still a great way to start one's weekend - I saw it last Saturday morning.

It's hard to choose which aspect of this film is the most amusing, but the characterization of gamblers, which I could never have appreciated when I saw this film in first run at the age of 6, is certainly up there. It turns out Jake the cat can telekinetically alter the results of any sports event he sees on TV, which gives the main characters a hope of obtaining the resources they need to repair Jake's spaceship. "Honest Harry," a Mafia rep in a ridiculous zoot suit, backs them up when they need to make a bet at 2,000 to 1 in order to buy a 12-pound bar of gold which the cat (whose real name is Zunar P-7-something) somehow shrinks down to the size of a bobby pin (get in the spirit, suspend your disbelief) in order to repair a burnt-out circuit on his spaceship.

Another plus is the parody of the courtship habits of humans and cats. At one point Jake forgets that he's flying a broken-down biplane - no, there's nothing this cat can't fly, not even a federal judge - when the female cat belonging to the ingenue is carried to safety. Falling over himself to express his relief, he almost causes his scientist friends to fall from the skid of a helicopter hovering pilotless above the earth.

At this point, Jake, whose moral sense is as far above most humans as are his psionic powers, has given up his chance to return to his galaxy in order to help his friends. General Sitwell (Harry Morgan, who was promoted a few grades from his simultaneous role on "M*A*S*H") is a hilarious martinet who relentlessly pursues Jake and Dr. Wilson (Stevenson) after they sneak back into the hangar where Jake's spaceship is being hidden. With both Jake's ship and the mothership he was trying to rendezvous with on their way out of the galaxy, Sitwell suddenly turns over a new leaf and decides the presence of an alien super-cat on earth is no big thing, rather than hauling him off to a lab to be dissected. This is where the flying judge comes in. It's also the part of the film I have the hardest time swallowing, now that I've been watching "The X-Files" for three years. Oh well, any other ending would have been inappropriate for children, I guess. Bring this home to yours the next time you need a tiebreaker at the video store.



Recommended: Yes