Felidae (film)

Felidae
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Michael Schaack
Produced by	Hanno Huth
Screenplay by	Akif Pirinçci Martin Kluger Stefaan Schieder
Story by	Akif Pirinçci
Starring	Ulrich Tukur Mario Adorf Helge Schneider Uwe Ochsenknecht Klaus Maria Brandauer
Music by	Anne Dudley
Cinematography	Werner Loos
Edited by	Klaus Basler
Production company	TFC Trickompany Animationstudio Ludewig Uli Meyer Animation Natterjack Animation Azadart Mediasoft Premier Films A-Film APS Dagda Film Limited Hahn Shin Corporation Wang Film Productions
Distributed by	Senator Film Distribution
Release dates	November 3, 1994 (1994-11-03) (Germany)
Running time	82 minutes
Country	Germany Denmark Taiwan
Language	German English

Felidae is a 1994 German adult animated neo-noir/crime thriller film directed by Michael Schaack, written by Martin Kluger, Stefaan Schieder and Akif Pirinçci based on the 1989 novel Felidae, produced by Trickompany, and starring Ulrich Tukur, Mario Adorf and Klaus Maria Brandauer. The story centers on domestic house cat Francis and the grisly feline murders taking place in his new neighborhood.^[1]

Plot

Francis, an intelligent and cynical cat, is moved to a gloomy, dilapidated house with his owner Gustav Löbel, an architect and erotic novelist. During Francis's exploratory tour of the house, he discovers a cat's corpse. At the crime scene, he meets and befriends Bluebeard, a foul-mouthed, one-eyed Maine Coon.

Soon, Francis discovers another body and the fact that his house's top floor is the meeting site of a sect of cats led by Joker; the members of the sect worship an entity named Claudandus and perform ritualistic suicide by throwing themselves in an electric current. When Francis's cover is blown, he is chased through the city's rooftops. He escapes through a skylight and meets a blind cat named Felicity, who supplies Francis with information on the Claudandus sect. The next day, Bluebeard takes Francis to Pascal, an elderly and tech-savvy cat who has taken to meticulously maintaining a list of feline deaths in the area, though which Francis learns that Felicity is the latest victim. That night, Francis is haunted by a nightmare in which Gregor Mendel leaves him with riddles.

During a rodent hunt, Francis discovers a video recording that documents the top floor's previous use as an experimental laboratory that was devoted to the research and development of a tissue adhesive that would close wounds in an instant. The test subjects largely consisted of stray cats. However, the serums usually failed, causing the animals to suffer painful deaths. The one cat who survived the experiments was christened by the lab's technicians as "Claudandus", Latin for "He who should or must be sealed". However, Claudandus eventually murdered the project's lead technician, leading to the escape of the other strays and the closure of the lab. Claudandus subsequently became a martyr figure.

Francis gradually traces the neighborhood cats who descended from the strays involved in the experiments and is confronted by Pascal, who reveals himself to be Claudandus. In his pursuits, he saw an opportunity to create a breed of cat that would correspond to the primal ancestor of all domestic cats and be capable of wiping out humanity. The murdered cats, now including Joker, were deemed unworthy of breeding with the pure females that Claudandus had engineered. An additional obstacle in Claudandus's plot is the fact that he is terminally ill with stomach cancer. Although Claudandus deems Francis an ideal successor, Francis defies Claudandus's ambition and attempts to delete the data that Claudandus had gathered. The ensuing fight between the two results in a fire. Francis soon kills Claudandus and flees the scene with Bluebeard.

Cast

• Ulrich Tukur as Francis, a cat detective who is new to the district and befriends Bluebeard and Pascal.
• Mario Adorf as Bluebeard, a disfigured Maine Coon cat who spent his childhood in Professor Preterius' lab and befriends Francis at the beginning of his murder investigation.
• Klaus Maria Brandauer as Claudandus formely known as Pascal, an elderly Havana Brown owned by Ziebold, a former associate of Preterius and the main antagonist.
• Helge Schneider as Isaiah, a Persian cat and self-proclaimed "Guardian of the Dead" who lives in the catacombs underneath the district and receives the bodies of murdered cats.
• Wolfgang Hess as Kong, a Himalayan cat who antagonizes Francis until his pregnant mate Solitaire is murdered.
• Gerhard Garbers as Professor Julius Preterius, a previous resident of Francis's current home who attempted to create an infallible tissue adhesive by experimenting on local stray cats until he was murdered by a test subject named Claudandus.
• Ulrich Wildgruber as Joker, the high priest of the Claudandus sect.
• Mona Seefried as Felicity, a Russian Blue who lost her eyesight as a kitten in Preterius' lab and lives in Francis's district.
• Manfred Steffen as Gustav Löbel, Francis's owner.
• Uwe Ochsenknecht as Archie, Gustav's acquaintance and renovating partner.
• Michaela Amler as Nhozemphtekh, a cat belonging to an "old and new" breed who seduces Francis.
• Christian Schneller as Gregor Mendel, who appears as a figure in Francis's dreams.
• Tobias Lelle and Frank Röth as the Hermanns, a pair of Oriental Shorthairs who act as Kong's sidekicks.
• Alexandra Mink as Pepeline, Joker's great-granddaughter.

The film's English dub features Cary Elwes as Francis, Michael Madsen as Bluebeard, Michael Ironside as Isaiah, George Hearn as Preterius, Tanya Roberts as Felicity, Christopher Plummer as Joker, Jesse Corti as Archie and John Hurt as Pascal. The rest of the cast is unknown.

Production

Felidae was the most expensive animated film produced in Germany to date, reportedly costing 10 million marks.^[2] The characters were designed by Paul Bolger, who also served as a head animator for the film from Dagda Film Limited in Dublin. Armen Melkonian was the film's layout designer and a head animator from the studio Azadart in Toronto. The film was mainly animated by TFC Trickompany in Hamburg, from which Hayo Freitag notably animated the Mendel sequence. Some of the animation was farmed out to other studios, including Animationstudio Ludewig in Hamburg, Uli Meyer Animation in London, Natterjack Animation in Vancouver (from which Steven Evangelatos was the head animator), Mediasoft in Hamburg, Premier Films in London (from which John Cousen was the head animator), A-Film APS in Kopenhagen (from which Michael Hegner was the head animator) and Hahn Shin Corporation in Seoul (from which Shin-Mok Choi was the head animator).

Differences from the book

The character of Bluebeard is more prominent in the film than in the book for the purpose of giving Francis an outside party to relay his thoughts to. Examples of this are the scenes in which Francis meets Jesaja in the catacombs and when he is reading a book on genetics near the story's climax; whereas he is alone for these scenes in the book, Bluebeard accompanies him in the film. The diary from which Francis learns of Professor Preterius's machinations is in written form in the book, and was updated to a video diary for the film. The climatic fight between Francis and Claudandus ends with Francis slitting Claudandus's throat in the book, while in the film, Francis slices Claudandus's abdomen open. The character of Felicity's owner is omitted from the film.

Release

Aside from being released on the VHS, it was also issued on the Laserdisc format in the English dub.

It was released on PAL DVD region 2 with Dolby 5.1 and 2.0 surround sound for the original German audio and Dolby 2.0 for the English audio dub in Dolby 2.0. Extras (in German only) include DVD commentary, trailer in German, and a "making of" documentary.^[3]

Soundtrack

Track listing

1. "Felidae" — 04:44 (Boy George/John Themis)
2. "Main Theme From Felidae" — 02:06
3. "Bluebeard - And Archie" — 01:26
4. "Kong And His Cronies" — 02:11
5. "Celebrating The Black Mass" — 05:55
6. "Felicity" — 01:50
7. "Pascal - The Enigma" — 01:37
8. "Mendel's Waltz" — 02:39
9. "Blood Sport" — 02:17
10. "A Gruesome Encounter" — 04:03
11. "Catacombs Of Doom" — 01:01
12. "The Egyptian Dream" — 01:18
13. "Seduction NHOZEMPHTEKH" 01:29
14. "In The Snow" — 01:14
15. "The Riddle Falls Into Place" — 05:04
16. "I Am Claudandus" — 05:01

References

External links

• Felidae at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• Felidae at the Internet Movie Database
• Trickompany website