1. Hausu (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
The ghost cat in this film takes on many forms from being an actual tangible cat, a framed painted representation of a cat, to a cat spirit jumping out of said painting. It is also the inspiration for a great shirt.
2. The Cats of “Rent-a-Neko” (Naoko Ogigami, 2012)
Ogigami has said she wanted to include a shot of a cat in every film she does and in this one, about a woman who rents out cats to help people cure their loneliness, it is a rare occasion to see a shot without a cat lounging about in the background.
3. The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
Marlowe wakes up in the 70s and the one to interrupt his big sleep is a cat very particular about the canned stuff.
4. The Making of Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)
When you are watching the film, if you even notice the cat in the scene, you think it is just a cat that happened to be there and they kept it in. But no, this cat was part of the plan and in this part of the documentary on the making of Bergman’s epic, you see the pains of getting a scene to work in which you need to coordinate a carriage with horses, actors, and a cat with wrangler.
5. Blind Woman’s Curse (Teruo Ishii, 1970)
Another film in which the cat is linked with curses and spirits. The cat has evidently stuck in people’s minds more, an alternate title being Black Cat’s Revenge, the actual title refers to the dragon tattoo just as prevalent, if not more so.
6. Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindo, 1968)
Shindo's other kaidan about the vengeance of two women against the military who raped and murdered them. Their power and vengeance takes the form of the titular black cat. One of the film's greatest images are the sequences of the women leaping over unsuspecting men in the pitch black of the set.
7. Go (Doug Liman, 1999)
The only thing I can remember about this movie is this cat who can read thoughts and communicates through subtitles.