Am I Crazy? (Question About the Ending)
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wqxyzcj — 10 years ago(July 01, 2015 01:51 PM)
There is no alternate ending.
You probably just watched the movie long ago, the memory faded and you came up with that ending because the ending scene was extremely suggestive and cat's true intentions weren't revealed until the last several seconds.
The people who feel the same way probably had the same experience. It isn't that improbable. This movies doesn't seem to be popular. -
kaydie-fee — 9 years ago(April 24, 2016 03:39 PM)
You're just 'remembering' what's the movie teases at the end - that the cat really does want to steal Drew's breath, everyone who watches that scene for the first time thinks 'wow that cat really is going to steal her breath, just like her grandma said' then it pulls a bait and switch and the cat just licks her face, your mind conflated the suggestion with an actual memory of the scene happening
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john-2130 — 9 years ago(May 09, 2016 07:53 AM)
This is mental! I remember seeing this as a teenager (I'm in the UK) and (almost) literally the only thing I remember about it is the ending where the cat takes the child's breath away.
As a Physics teacher, I often use cat references/ puns/ cartoons (as a bit of a play on the Schrodinger thing) I've done this for years- and when students query my apparent obsession, I tell them my theory about how all cats are evil, and steal your breath when you're asleep etc. -and this is
all based on having seen this film when growing up!
I don't buy the false memory syndrome thing that people have suggested here- there must be a second version in existence! I feel so strongly about this I've just created an IMDB account, despite this being a six year old thread!
Deffo going to give this one a re-watch -
universaldennis — 9 years ago(May 09, 2016 08:46 AM)
Well, I wish I could find some evidence of it, but I haven't been able to. I even looked to see if maybe the director was on Twitter and considered asking him about this. He's not, though, which is not surprising as he's kind of getting up there now.
_()_/ -
ryansassy1 — 9 years ago(July 29, 2016 08:20 AM)
The false memory syndrome is very real, I assure you. Let me give an example:
Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer was one of my favorite films when I was a kid, saw it every Christmas and even dressed up like Rudolph one Halloween so I had a sort of "expertise" on it even at a young age. The scene where the elf returns to the cave with a tame abominable snow man who is now missing teeth because the elf (who wanted to be a dentist) had a brilliant idea to remove them: in my mind, for decades, I fervently KNEW that he told Rudolph that Bumble was mean because of a toothache, which was solved by removing the teeth, and so now Bumble was docile because he wasn't in pain. I would have sworn up and down that this was in the film. NO, it wasn't.
What actually happened is that the elf removed Bumble's teeth after he was knocked out by a rock falling on his head, so that Bumble couldn't bite anything. No tooth ache ever mentioned. When I rewatched the film as an adult, I couldn't believe how I had misremembered this for so many years, I was
so certain
the Bumble had a toothache.
In hindsight, what my mind had done was to confuse the old fable of the lion with the thorn in his paw, with the abominable snow man's teeth, and somehow reasoned that the snow man was kind after the "aching tooth" was removed, just as the lion was friendly to the mouse after the thorn was removed. It seemed logical, so I believed it was true and convinced myself that it had happened in the film. But, it hadn't.
I believe what's happened with Cat's Eye is a similar trick of the mind. We, the audience, are totally set up to believe it will happen. First of all, somewhere, you may have seen a film in which a cat actually does steal someone's breath. Then add to the fact that the mom mentioned earlier in Cat's Eye that cats are supposed to steal kids' breath, and it set you up to believe this might happen. The troll who actually did steal the girl's breath is a memorable visual, as is the end scene where it freeze frames, so even though the cat never actually stole her breath, we have that imagery from the troll and the misdirection at the end with the cat sitting on her chest before the freeze frame, and voila, we would swear on a stack of bibles that the cat stole her breath and then it went to freeze frame.
But this didn't happen
.
Mental, isn't it? Despite all the gains of knowledge in the last 100 years, the mind is truly undiscovered country.
"I'm sorry, but.." is a self-contained lie.
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ussfantasy — 9 years ago(May 10, 2016 07:31 AM)
I once saw a horror movie called Man's Best Friend, about a genetically engineered murderous dog. There's a scene where the titular dog is chasing a cat, which climbs a tree to escape. The dog climbs up right after the cat and swallows it whole.
Only, as a kid I distinctly recall seeing this movie on TV and the scene went differently. The cat jumped out of the tree and escaped with its life. I clearly recall seeing the cat jump from the branch, land on the sidewalk, shake its head as if dazed, and run away.
I've done online research and asked in several movie forums, but there's no evidence this alternate scene ever existed, on-TV or otherwise. I've come to the conclusion I was remembering incorrectly and I had made the whole thing up. Over the course of my research I've come across other people who have been surprised that movies go different than they remember from childhood. One person even told me he clearly remembers an alternate ending to T2 where Arnold never gets lowered into the melting vat!
My point is, human memories are very much in flux. As other people have pointed out in this thread, the set up to this ending is supposed to make you THINK the cat might be a villain, so it's not a surprise more than one person is recalling this scene that never happened.
In the 80's it was very common to have a 'twist' ending in horror movies. Remember the endings to the first Freddy and Jason movies? Cat's Eye was subverting the trope. You're supposed to think there's a twist, but at the last moment they denied what you expect and give you the norm instead.
Having listened to the DVD commentary by the director, I fully suspect if there was ever a plan to make an alternate ending (for TV or otherwise) he would have mentioned it in the audio commentary. Whether he had a hand in developing it or not, I feel he would have talked about it. Directors can be very protective of their work, and if some company had completely changed his intended ending for a TV-release, he would have had something to say about it! -
TVholic — 9 years ago(August 12, 2016 08:44 PM)
My point is, human memories are very much in flux.
Very true. As I recall, human memory doesn't work like computer memory where files remain unchanged on a hard drive unless you intentionally save an edited version to replace it. Every single time you remember something, it's being transferred to short-term memory and instantly rewritten back to long-term memory. It's not that hard for something to get corrupted during that roundtrip - like by reading somebody else's description of a scene - and if that happens, you'd swear that the new, wrong memory is the one you've always had. It's why eyewitness testimony isn't as important in a court of law as the public thinks it is.