The Cat From Outer Space (1978): Alien Fun from Disney’s Golden Age of Live-Action
In Disney’s oddball sci-fi romp The Cat From Outer Space (1978), a telepathic alien cat crash-lands on Earth and needs $120,000 worth of gold to fix his spaceship.
The Cat From Outer Space
Director: Norman Tokar
Country: USA
Disney Family Entertainment in the 1960s and 1970s
For children growing up in the 1960s and 1970s in the US, Disney and PBS (Public Broadcasting System) were pretty much the only games in town when it came to “family programming” outside of a few Charlie Brown holiday specials and the annual network TV airing of The Wizard of Oz. While inherently famous for their beloved animated characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and the stars of their feature-length animated features (Dumbo, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty), from the early 1950s, Disney cranked out an astonishing number of live-action films. Their subject matter ran the gamut from adaptations of literary classics (Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) to energetic adventure fare (The Story of Robin Hood, Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier, Swiss Family Robinson) to sentimental tear-jerkers (Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows).
However, Disney’s stock-in-trade was primarily wholesome comedies that appealed to audiences of all ages, with classic titles like The Shaggy Dog (1959), The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), Mary Poppins (1964), and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) raking in millions year after year, both in theaters and on television broadcasts. Many of these featured extraordinary special effects, magical moments that, as children, we took for granted without ever wondering, “How did they do that?” It never crossed our minds to question how extra-terrestrial siblings Tony and Tia floated inanimate objects around with their telekinetic powers in Escape from Witch Mountain (1975)—they were from OUTER SPACE! Herbie aka The Love Bug (1969) could skip like a stone across the water and we thought nothing of it—HE’S ALIVE. A football-playing mule called Gus (1976)? WHY THE HECK NOT.
Therefore, when the summer of 1978 would mark the premiere of a film called The Cat from Outer Space, no one blinked an eye or flicked a whisker. After all, Tony and Tia had just orbited back around in their sequel, Return to Witch Mountain, a couple of months earlier, so a feline counterpart seemed like the natural progression. And, in many ways, it was.
Plot Summary: Jake the Telepathic Alien Cat
The basic premise sees a flying saucer, piloted by a most uncommon alien house cat named Zunar-J-5/9 Doric-4-7, making an emergency landing on Earth when his craft malfunctions. The UFO immediately attracts the attention of the US military, with the investigation overseen by General Stilton (Harry Morgan) and his delegating line of underlings, Col. Woodruff (Howard Platt), Capt. Anderson (James Hampton), and Sgt. Duffy (Ronnie Schell). After the General commandeers the ship, our intrepid four-footed hero tracks them to the Energy Research Laboratory, where he crosses paths with a good-hearted scientist named Frank Wilson (Ken Berry).
Communicating via telepathy, the cat (who Frank inexplicably but helpfully nicknames “Jake”) persuades the open-minded egghead to assist him in procuring the vital element, Org-12, that he needs to repair his flying machine and return to his home world. Org-12, we learn, is more commonly known as… gold, and Jake needs $120,000 worth of it to turn the trick. Thankfully, Frank’s gambling-addicted co-worker and neighbor Norman Link (Maclean Stevenson) stops by to watch a horse race he has bet on, which gives Jake the idea of using his energy-amplifying collar (which lights up whenever he uses it, just in case the audience was confused from whence these magical moments occurred) to spur Link’s steed on to victory. Frank and Jake then convince Link to contact his bookie and parlay his winnings into an additional wager and earn the $120K. Hijinks ensue, including a telekinetic display of billiards mastery, and soon our heroes are headed back to ERL to get Jake back into space, whereupon screenwriter Ted Key introduces a criminal underlord named Olympus who wants the cat, or at least the collar, for his evil misdeeds.
Director Norman Tokar’s Final Disney Film
While hardly the most inspired of the Disney sci-fi/fantasy efforts, director Norman Tokar keeps the plot clipping along with a likable cast and energetic action sequences. Having gotten his start in television, helming almost 100 episodes of Leave It to Beaver, Tokar toiled within the Mouse House for the majority of his film career, making his big screen bow with Big Red (1962) and overseeing such high-concept comedies as The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit (1968), The Boatniks (1970), The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975), and No Deposit, No Return (1976). The Cat from Outer Space proved to be his final film, with Tokar passing away of a heart attack on April 6, 1979, at 59. (In addition to his Disney credits, Tokar is famous for having been married to Lois Lane herself, Phyllis Coates, from 1955 to 1960.)
The Cat From Outer Space Cast
Disney never had trouble attracting top-flight talent, and this proved no exception. Besides his popularity on the TV shows F-Troop and Mayberry R.F.D., Ken Berry likely won the role of Frank Wilson thanks to his similar physical appearance and screen persona of Disney veteran Dean Jones (The Shaggy D.A., That Darn Cat), so much so that Berry inherited the lead from Jones for The Love Bug’s 1974 sequel, Herbie Rides Again. While these two films were his only two ventures for the studio, Berry does a fine job projecting the same befuddled but engaged relationship to the fantastic events occurring around him (much as Jones had inherited that mantle from frequent headliner Fred MacMurray). Berry would go on to further small-screen fame as a member of the wildly successful Mama’s Family in the late 1980s.
Sandy Duncan, who plays Berry’s onscreen co-worker and potential paramour, Liz Bartlett, displays a fine flair for physical comedy and shares a connection with Dean Jones, having made her film debut opposite him in The Million Dollar Duck (1970). Dennis was never a big film star but became a beloved fixture on episodic television (The Hogan Family) and on stage, where she starred in the title role for the 1979 Broadway revival of Peter Pan and was nominated for a Tony Award for her high-wire antics. Speaking of Peter Pan, character actor Hans Conried, who plays the stodgy Dr. Heffel in Cat from Outer Space, delivered the histrionic vocals as Captain Hook 25 years earlier for Disney’s 1953 animated film version.
The rest of the supporting cast is populated with oodles of familiar faces, including Morgan and Stevenson (with the former replacing the latter on the TV hit show M*A*S*H), Hampton (The Longest Yard), Roddy McDowall (Planet of the Apes), former pro wrestler Tiger Joe Marsh (Beware! The Blob), Sorrell Booke (Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard), and Ronnie Schell, who not only voices our titular feline but also appears onscreen as the put-upon Sgt. Duffy.
Special Effects by Art Cruikshank
Undoubtedly, one of the unsung heroes for Disney’s fantasy outings was special effects maestro Art Cruikshank. An Oscar-winner for Fantastic Voyage (1966), Cruikshank spent nearly two decades designing matte paintings and making objects float for dozens of family features, including Pete’s Dragon (1977), The Black Hole (1979), The Watcher in the Woods (1980), Tron (1982), and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983). It is easy enough to imagine that Jake’s interstellar collar is responsible for an entire table of billiard balls magically finding their way into all the pockets upon a single break or that a spaceship happens to float through the sky or actors above and around it while sitting in stasis at ERL. But it was Cruikshank’s team that made it all happen.
Stunt Coordinator Dick Warlock
Another behind-the-scenes all-star is stunt coordinator Dick Warlock, familiar to horror fans for his role as Michael Myers in Halloween II (1981). Warlock handled the stunts on numerous Disney productions and is responsible for the jaw-dropping aerial sequence where Frank and Jake attempt to rescue Liz from a crewless helicopter via a tattered old biplane. The sole questionable special effect occurs when Liz “helpfully” brings over a veterinarian to aid Jake’s sneezing fit (a ruse to get Frank out of his date with Liz and continue the mission), and the quack sedates the unsuspecting alien. I am confident they shot their feline actor full of dope because that kitty is limp as a noodle as the human cast carries it to and fro.
Legacy of The Cat From Outer Space
To the target youth audiences of its day, The Cat from Outer Space must have appeared a bit quaint, especially in the wake of more spectacular sci-fi screen adventures like Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Still, it enjoyed a fair theatrical run, followed by consistent reruns on television, and its appeal endures nearly a half-century later, thanks to home video. That is just Jake by me.
This essay on The Cat From Outer Space was previously published in the book Meow! Cats in Horror, Sci-Fi, and Fantasy Movies.
About the author
AARON CHRISTENSEN (aka “Dr. AC”) is a Chicago-based actor, writer, personal trainer, and self-defense instructor. He has viewed and reviewed over 4,000 (and counting) fright flick titles for his popular blog, podcast, and YouTube Channel, HORROR 101 with Dr. AC.
Aaron is the editor of the critically acclaimed guidebooks HORROR 101: The A-List of Horror Films and Monster Movies and HIDDEN HORROR: A Celebration of 101 Underrated and Overlooked Fright Flicks (winner of the 2013 Rondo Hatton Award). He is also a founding member of WildClaw Theatre, Chicago’s only horror-centric theater.
In addition to serving on the writing staff of HorrorHound magazine from 2009-2015, he has contributed to Rue Morgue, Fangoria, Evilspeak, Famous Monsters of Filmland, and Vanessa Morgan’s compendiums, When Animals Attack, Strange Blood, Evil Seeds, and Meow!
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