Easily one of the most significant releases in American exploitation film history, this Blu-ray pairing of two standout Something Weird staples sheds light on how two wild and often stupefying '60s thrillers were drastically altered by their distributors to create something seedy and bizarre (and nearly lost to the mists of time). The end results are exercises in cinematic madness with salacious elements added to make them more commercial, though it's hard to imagine any average viewer stumbling into these and getting the simple titillation they were expecting.

First up is Confessions of a Psycho Cat, a New York-shot thriller that took a while to make it to the screen (under the name 3 Loves of a Psycho Cat) after it was shot in Manhattan and outside the city. Essentially an updated, gender-switching take on the classic short story "The Most Dangerous Game" (with a little bit of Ten Little Indians gimmickry for good measure), the film has weapon-wielding, decadent Virginia (Lorrance, credited as "Eileen Lord") summoning three men and offering them each $100,000 if they can stay alive for 24 hours while she hunts them. However, she believes that each of them -- junkie dealer Buddy (Geraci), washed-up wrestling champ Rocco (LaMotta, the Raging Bull himself), and actor Charles (Lorrance) -- is responsible for deliberate murder despite being acquitted. As she carries out in her plan in a series of outrageous scenarios, Virginia's brother (Garrabrandt) is concerned about her mental state and is working with her shrink to stop the madness.

If that sounds like a straightforward story, it is in theory -- but the end result is anything but since it was given a new framing device with Geraci brought back to tell the story so far to a group of scantily clad young druggies apparently having an apartment orgy. Additional nudie inserts were also sprinkled into a phone call scene with LaMotta (with a new topless actress and some terrible audio work), all filmed in a far more flat style than the flamboyant original film which made use of extensive wide-angle lenses and crazy framing. The film was also solicited under the title 3 Loves of a Psycho Cat (which may have been the original short cut), what we have today is a crazed 69 minutes that fits the Something Weird ethos like a glove.

Film number two continues the feline-themed title concept with The Fat Black Pussycat, which opens with a young woman named Edie falling prey to a serial killer in an alleyway. Because of the inexplicable recurring presence of a (not fat) black kitty at the scene each time, the culprit has been dubbed the Cat Murderer -- which also fits the bill with the only useful clue, a matchbox on the dead girl for the Black Pussycat Cafe & Theater. The beatnik hangout affiliated with a bar called Feeney's proves to be a major investigation for the detective in charge, Dave (Jamus), especially when another couple on the scene are killed in a flashy proto-giallo sequence with their slashed bodies tossed off a fire escape. Apparently women who "get around" are being targeted when they aren't lounging around sipping coffee, so it's up to Dave and his partner Ed to go undercover among the counterculture where they discover a baffling stew of plotlines involving feline ESP, a female NYU anthropology professor (Damon), and sexual confusion you'll never believe. Along the way you get some crazy cast members including future Woodstock legend "Wavy Gravy" (Hugh Romney), with Hector Elizondo and The Boys in the Band's Leonard Frey cited in the credits but good luck finding 'em.

Unlike our first film, this one was seen by the public and still exists as intended before it got overhauled into the familiar version we have today. The film obviously was meant to play like a straightforward crime procedural, but the additional material injects bloody knife murders, the maximum amount of bare skin you could get away with in 1963, the entire cat angle, and lots of footage of the "Chief of Detectives" sitting around at his desk making proclamations and acting like a red herring. The entire ending is reworked as well into something that definitely wouldn't get made today.

Confessions of a Psycho Cat first appeared on DVD in 2001 as one of the earlier Something Weird titles via Image Entertainment, featuring a very nice transfer from the negative and a second bonus movie, Hot Blooded Woman, tucked away in the bonus features along with trailers (this film, Bad Girls Don't Cry, Come Play with Me, Fuego, In Hot Blood, Olga's House of Shame, Ride the Wild Pink Horse, Spoiled Rotten, Stefania, and Submission), a "Preface to a Life" archival short, and a sexploitation gallery. The Fat Black Pussycat turned up later in 2001 in a kitty-themed double feature DVD from Image and Something Weird paired up with 1966's The Black Cat, with extras including seven deleted scenes from the original version of the film, cat-themed trailers (both features here, The Cats, a different trailer for Confessions of a Psycho Cat, The Girl from Pussycat, The House of Cats, Puss 'n Boots, Pussycats Paradise, and The Tomcat), a "Margie La Mont: The Cat Girl" burlesque short, and a horror drive-in gallery.

The Blu-ray edition features fresh 4K scans from the 35mm original camera negatives, with the expected improvements in detail and contrast throughout. Confessions is 1.33:1 like its predecessor with the framing shifted slightly downward, and it looks great in motion compared to the already nice SD version. Fat Black Pussy Cat is presented at 1.66:1, adding info to the sides while trimming off a bit from the top and bottom. Compositionally it looks fine throughout; for some reason, only the Image DVD has a brief cutaway at the 32-minute mark of a grinning bald guy canoodling with two women at a random restaurant table that has nothing to do with the rest of the film and was clearly shot at another time. Both films have DTS-HD MA 2.0 English mono tracks with optional English SDH subtitles, and they sound great for what they are.

Getting firsthand testimony from actors of this era is extremely rare now given that most of them are deceased or impossible to track down thanks to their pseudonyms, and this release pulls off a major coup thanks to a new audio commentary with Lorrance the psycho cat herself in conversation with Bruce Holecheck. It's a priceless account of the making of the film as she displays excellent recall for the backgrounds of her co-actors, her dismayed reaction to all the nudie insert scenes, the covert shooting all over Manhattan, and pretty much anything else you could want to know. "Bronx Bulls and Psycho Cats" (11m54s) with LaMotta's nephew, Blue Underground's William Lustig, is a very entertaining remembrance of the boxing legend including his state of mind after his career heights, his marital issues, his forays into acting including Guys and Dolls on the stage, and the typecasting he faced in the '60s including a TV commercial by Michael Cimino. You also get a wild collection of previously unseen Confessions of a Psycho Cat dailies and outtakes (19m40s), silent with a music score, including some great coverage of LaMotta's phone call scene with the original actress. The big extra for The Fat Black Pussycat is the entire original 80-minute version for the first time since it appeared on VHS from Something Weird; it's a lot more coherent and plays like a generic cop mystery set in the world of beatniks. The most entertaining aspect here is the inclusion of hilarious newspaper headlines and news stories updating you on the action, which adds a bit of an H.G. Lewis feel. The film is also much talkier this way and a lot less trashy, so plan accordingly. Also included are both of the trailers for Confessions, the trailer for Fat Black Pussycat, and a 2m40s gallery of promotional material for both films. As usual for Distribpix, the deluxe boxed packaging is impressive and comes with an illustrated insert booklet with an essay by Kevin Hefferman about the legal state of cinematic obscenity at the time, the background behind Alabama-based distributer M.A. Ripps who oversaw the overhauling of Fat Black Pussycat, and the place of Confessions among other adaptations of the short story. You also get an illuminating account by Lisa Petrucci of the legendary Movielab haul (really a rescue mission) that resulted in hundreds of films being discovered and/or saved for future posterity including the two we now have here.

CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT: Distribpix Blu-ray

CONFESSIONS OF A PSYCHO CAT: Image DVD

THE FAT BLACK PUSSYCAT: Distribpix Blu-ray

THE FAT BLACK PUSSYCAT: Image DVD

Reviewed on August 20, 2025