Lon McCallister

Peggy Ann Garner

Preston Foster

Forrest Tucker

Skip Homeier

Sara Haden

Irving Bacon

Gene Reynolds

Morton Grant

Phil Karlson

Dorothy Yost

Frank Durlauf

W. Howard Greene

Harvey Manger

Paul Sawtell

William Moss

Ridgeway Callow

William L. Nolte

Adventure

Romance

Drama

Western

The Big Cat

Eagle-Lion Films

United States of America

CinemaSerf

Were it not for a rather cheesy romance between the hapless, suit and tie wearing "Danny" (Lon McCallister) and the terribly chintzy "Doris" (Peggy Ann Garner), this might have made for quite an exciting mountain adventure. The former arrives from the city to the area where his late mother grew up. The area is suffering not just from the depression, but from a drought and his welcome is not as warm as he might like. He takes up with "Eggers" (Preston Foster) who is set on hunting down a local cougar that is wreaking havoc on the local farming community, but he is soon embroiled in some local shenanigans with the "Hawks" family - "Gil" (Forrest Tucker) and his two yokel sons. Some of the hunt scenes are quite good fun, though the cougar seemed a little unenthusiastic to me; and there is quite a fun waterside brawl. Sadly, though, there is just way too much sentimental guff (usually with a gently accompanying string score) to sustain the theme for me. There's a bit of a twist at the (really quite implausible) end, but despite some fairly decent, active, photography, I felt it ran just a bit low on gas.

English