Cat's Eye

A trio of moggy-linked Stephen King tales, two of them adapted from his own short stories, the final section a celluloid 'original'. James Woods chooses the wrong method of giving up smoking, when he succumbs to the positively draconian services of 'Quitters, Inc' and suffers bizarre ciggie-filled hallucinations; cuckolded husband McMillan forces his wife's toyboy Hays into a potentially fatal climb around the outside walls of his penthouse; young Barrymore is given a bad time by a demon in the woodwork, while her pet cat takes the blame. In each instance, the limp pay-off undercuts strong performances (manic Woods and sympathetic Drew especially), and the usual caveats about cumulatively unsatisfying portmanteau pictures certainly apply. King's moments of winking self-reference (a ringer for the car in Christine, a character reading Pet Sematary) hardly seem warranted in the circumstances.