BECAUSE OF THE CATS (1973)
aka Brutalization
Article 5001 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-27-2015
Directed by Fons Rademakers
Featuring Bryan Marshall, Alexandra Stewart, Edward Judd
Country: Netherlands / Belgium
What it is: Crime drama

A police detective from Amsterdam investigates a gang that has been taking part in a series of burglaries, acts of vandalism and rapes.

The John Stanley guide from which I culled this title speaks of a series of murders cause by a devil cult. The blurbs on the DVD package for the movie make it sound like an exercise in brutal rape/revenge drama along the lines of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. Both descriptions are stunningly inaccurate. Though a cult of sorts is indeed involved, to call it a “devil cult” is to imply details that simply aren’t there; it’s more of Nietzschean “power of will” cult. And though the story does involve a gang rape, and there is an ample amount of exploitation elements to the story, to call it a rape/revenge drama is to imply a story arc that is simply not there. What we have here is a crime drama, in which a police inspector tries to crack the mystery of why a gang of young men (and another gang of young women) are doing what they’re doing. Yes, there’s a political subtext, and it must be pretty obvious if even I can see it. Anybody drawn to this movie by the two previously cited descriptions will be disappointed; on its own terms, it’s a passable but slightly dull drama for the most part, though the best parts come near the end of the movie. It has its uses, but it falls very short of the sensationalism the descriptions promise. And as such, I don’t think it really qualifies as a genre movie.