[5]

Robert Mitchum headlines this William Wellman flick about a family battling their personal demons while also trying to hunt and destroy a near-mythical black panther that is preying on their cattle during a deadly snowstorm. Mitchum plays one of three brothers, along with William Hopper and Tab Hunter. Mitchum and Hopper go off into the blizzard to kill the panther, but the family’s just as worried that they might kill each other in the process. Meanwhile, the father (Philip Tonge) succombs to alcoholism, the younger brother (Hunter) tries to win respect from the family before his impending marriage, and the mother (Beulah Bondi) sits in pious judgment of them all.

Wellman shot the film in color, but intentionally refrained from a colorful palette. The experiment is a puzzling one at best. The script is stagey at times, the characters overly-cynical and mean-spirited to the point where any kind of resolution feels emotionally forced. But for whatever reason, Track of the Cat isn’t a total loss for me. I enjoy the setting and some of the banter, and the cat, while treated largely as an existential threat, does manage to cast a nice shadow of doom over the story. With Teresa Wright, Diana Lynn and an odd cameo appearance by Carl Switzer (Alfalfa from The Little Rascals).