Info on the Deleted prologue
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — General Discussion
TelevisionJunkie — 21 years ago(January 26, 2005 02:10 PM)
From "Stephen King: At the Movies"
The details may help you understand that what remained was a crippled thing though, in many respects, a lively, funny, scary 94 mins.
King's screenplays opens with a funeral for a little girl who has unaccountably died in her sleep, most likely a victim of SIDS, though the grieving mother fixates on the idea that the family's gray tabby had stolen the child's breath. When mom arrives home, she grabs the nearest weapon an Uzi machine gun the old man happens to have lying around the house and stalks the cat.
Meanwhile, the cat is in the upstairs bedroom, stalking the tinkling sounds of bells, coming from behind the walls. The mother bursts in, firing a clip at the cat who barely escapes. Camera down to a hole in the baseboards as mom leaves the room after the cat, where we hear the jingle of bells and see the two glowing red eyes about six inches from the floor.
King has the ghost of the dead girl appear to the cat, imploring it to find the creature that actually took her life and sets out on a quest, giving us a cat's eye view of the lives it encounters as it seeks a final showdown with the malevolent troll.
Though this opening sequence was shot and shown in a rough cut to test audiences, King reports: "The prologue was cut at the behest of Frank Yablans (then head of MGM/UA). Theere was one audience in America that saw it with everything and verbally they responded to it pretty clearly and most of them responded on the critic cards pretty favorably. There was a percentage there's always a percentage that said thaty didn't like this or that, but the difference between the critics cards with that section and without it, was that the people who saw the prologue said they understood the movie, and there was a huge response tp the film without the prologue from people who said, "Oh, I don't know what's going on."
Reportedly, Yablans insisted that it be dropped because some mothers seemed sensitive to a child's death, and animal lovers seemed sensitive to a cat being shot at. The final cut was made without director Lewis Teague's input or knowledge.
Whoever was responsible, the decision to drop the prologue from Cat's Eye was a fatal blow.
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chicomdk — 20 years ago(June 02, 2005 09:17 AM)
I think maybe they should of reworte it with something a little less werid like the mother going after the cat with a kitchen knife or maybe just a hand gun. I think that would have been a little less silly. or even if they didn't wont to do that they could of had the mother just throw the cat out of the house or sent it away with animal control. They should have at least left the core of the proloug in. Oh well maybe i m wrong i guess thats why i dont write movie scripts shrug
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infexshun-1 — 20 years ago(September 16, 2005 03:26 AM)
Hmm, based on your description, it sounds terrible (prologue). But it would be nice to see the movie as it was intended. Also, never judge a book by its description??
maybe king will release a DVD with this original opening somewhere on it.
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robocopperus — 20 years ago(October 29, 2005 12:15 PM)
Thanks for the information TelevisionJunkie. Though, this still doesn't make sense to me -
The little girl that appears in the shop window is a dead girl wanting to be avengedbut they had the same actress (Drew Barrymore) play a little girl who the cat saves in the final act - so did she die or does she live?
When they first filmed the prologue, did they use a different actress for the window scene? And then when they cut the prologue (the plot of the girl dying), they decided to use the same little girl in both parts of the movie in order to make it more cohesive??
If anybody has any info regarding this it would be appreciated - -
karcreat2 — 16 years ago(January 16, 2010 07:05 PM)
Sorry, but this 'deleted sequence' sounds stupid and not important.
it actually makes the story more ridiculous than anything else.
The way the film stands now, I always got the impression that the girl (Drew) was calling out to the cat to come save her from the troll that she knows will try to 'get her' in the final 'The General' storyshe is somehow, inexplicably (yet cooly!) linked to the kittythus, the final scene, where she whispers 'Hi!' to the cat and he licks her facethey are final united, as if it was meant to be;)
K
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Shame that it was removed from the final cut 