Weekend One • Lecture Presented by Alex West

From emblems of the occult to internet sensations, our feline familiars occupy a rarefied space in contemporary culture. By examining how cats came to be associated with the dark arts and their subsequent persecution to their current role as influencers and meme generators, we will look at the multitude of roles cats have played throughout our history.

This lecture will examine the spaces between life and death, powerful and powerless that cats have occupied and how their abilities are used in the films Bell, Book and Candle (1958), House (1977) and Pet Sematary (1989). By looking at their different uses in a variety of films, we will aim to uncover why these beguiling creatures provoke the dueling sensations of dread and adoration within us. (ALEX WEST)

This lecture originated at The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies.

Weekend One • Presented by Severin Films • Introduction by Kier-La Janisse

Also known as Ghost Cat of the Cursed Pond, Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit is one of the many mid-century Japanese explorations of “Kaibyo” or “ghost cat”  mythology, and one of the best. Director Yoshihiro Ishikawa was no stranger to kaibyo country, having co-written Nobuo Nakagawa’s equally chilling Black Cat Mansion (1958) and directed Ghost Cat of Otama Pond (1960). Released the same year as Kaneto Shindo’s more well-known Kuroneko, Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit mines that indelible trope of the cat ghost story: a violent and greedy Lord kills a young woman when she refuses to become his concubine, only for her cat to drink her blood and become her shapeshifting avenger. “Beginning in a quietly haunting vein reminiscent of Ugetsu,” wrote Spectacle Theatre in their promotional text for a 2016 screening of the film, “Bakeneko descends into a nightmarish parade of splattered blood, decapitations and ghosts gnawing on severed limbs.” Not to be missed by anyone with a beloved feline familiar! (Kier-La Janisse)

This screening of Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit is held in conjunction with the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies’ presentation of Alexandra West’s multimedia lecture “The Cat Came Back: Feline Familiars in the Horror Genre”.