I wrote about this film at length on my film review blog here back when it was first fansubbed. It is - at the risk of sounding pretentious - cinema looking at itself, and it's one of my favorite movies of all time.
Like I said in my review, the plot involves a film studio that had been successful during Japan's golden age of film but was now struggling to keep itself afloat, and many of the actors Ōbayashi cast - Makoto Satō, Akihiko Hirata, Akira Ōizumi, just to name a few - were people who the audience would have recognized as having been at the height of their fame during that bygone era. Takako Irie and her daughter Wakaba play the same character at different ages; the elder Irie was a famous silent film actress who went on to star in bakeneko (cat horror) films. The film uses a lot of bakeneko tropes as a recurring motif and this is what qualifies it as a Halloween-appropriate film in my eyes - possibly the closest thing to an actual horror movie that I will talk about on this blog.
The fact that Hirata would die less than a year after the release of the film gives a real-world layer to that feeling that Legend of the Cat Monster is looking at an era of cinema - and an era, period - that was moving further and further into the past. Hirata plays a producer who was implied to have been a new member of the fictional film studio's production crew in the flashbacks that take place 40 years prior; I'm not sure if this was an intentional nod to how Hirata himself got his start in the film industry behind the camera (as an assistant director at Shintoho), but it could have been.
The film is the 100th installment of Tuesday Suspense Theater, and in 1998 a theatrical version was released - this is the reason why you'll sometimes see the release year given as 1983 and sometimes as 1998. In November 2020 it was released to DVD for the first time. In December 2022 it was given unofficial English fansubs, and an unofficial DVD can now be bought through Far East Flix. (#notsponsored, but wouldn't it be nice if I was.)
Here is a Google-translated review from a user named "Mucho" on kinenote.com who watched it when it first aired on television:
"I haven't seen the movie version, but here are my impressions of the 1983 TV version from my movie notes.
What is the secret of the eternal youth and beauty of the great actress who was once the star of a monster cat movie? A new screenwriter meets her and the mystery is solved.
This is a revolution in TV dramas! My head went crazy and exploded. Every time there was a commercial break, I was dancing around the room. If someone else saw that, they would think I was crazy. Yes, just like the main character's screenwriter... This masterpiece was not talked about at all in the streets because of the disposable and forgetful medium of TV. What a shame!
The pain of the screenwriter who can't write is deeply felt, the director's position is clearly explained, and the sadness of the old actress is conveyed.
You will need a lot of knowledge to enjoy this drama. The main part is reminiscent of actual anecdotes, and movie fans will praise it as a movie that talks about movies, or rather a TV drama. But how do ordinary viewers feel about it? The punch line is that it's a slightly unusual drama and people immediately change the channel. It's a special production that is not aimed at everyone, but at a select few. Why was such a drama allowed to be aired on TV?"
Here also is a very detailed analysis of the sets and how they reference prior films, with citations at the bottom. I've linked a Google-translated version, which seems minimally garbled.
I can't give you much besides some posters that you maybe haven't seen before, since this is not a terribly well-known movie (although neither is it very obscure) and there's not much in the way of merch tie-ins. But trust me, this movie is so good. It is so, so good. If you watch any movie based off of a recommendation from some random person on the internet this Halloween, I hope it might be this one.
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