Nazi_Fighter_David The film deals with the stark realities of an isolated ranching family pitting itself against the forces of nature an early winter snowstorm, and the ravages of a wild panther… Mitchum's character, Curt Bridges is on the hunt and also struggling to survive… If we meditate the way he measures it, we see how his mind begins more and more to wander and less and less able to focus… We see him more and more aware of pain and discomfort… His hope comes and diminishes and departs and then returns… So there's an unceasing sense of doom in those sequences that simply were hunting… The brothers represent different approaches by man to nature… Curt wants to dominate nature, wishes to control it… Arthur is just the opposite… He is so gentle and understanding that he can't deal with nature… He doesn't have the hardness that Curt has… And there's Harold who was the successful one because he has enough strength to deal with harshness of nature… The Indian is the one who believes in the cat as a myth, as a mystery and as something almost sacred… Because of the legend of the cat he has Arthur carve wooden cats out every year to avert danger… Now this is a very sterile family… The old man only deal with life through drink and through remembering the past… The mother is a very unlikable woman… She is manipulative, and she simply wants to be heard… You don't see any love interests or connections except for the younger brother… Fear is very much a part of "Track of the Cat." It is the foreboding, ever-present backdrop really to the drama

thomas196x2000 Oh, a rugged outdoor adventure that I had never heard of--with Robert Mitchum hunting a bad killer cat ...I was looking forward to it! Well there is a reason few people have heard of it...this movie is terrible! I mean, this is the type of movie where you keep on thinking it's going to get better, but it never does.Mitchum's family is losing livestock, then lives, to some big cat. The family calls it a "painter". Don't ask. The old dad of the bunch drinks and says crazy things. Mom is old Beulah Bondi with her weird eyes, quotin' the Good Word and hanging out all day and night with her son's corpse in his bedroom as he rots away. (Don't bother ma, she's corpse-sittin'!) Mitchum found the brother's body, no blood, no nothing, even still has color in his face! Hey, couldn't the makeup folks apply just a little makeup? Look closely and you'll see him shift a little bit after Mitchum puts him on his horse, if you can stand getting that far in this movie.Determined to go get that bad cat, or painter, Bob dons a bright red coat. This is the only color in the outdoor scenes as the director wanted it to look like black and white and shot things in shadows. Don't try to figure that one out.Late in the movie, there's a scene where Mitchum tries to light a fire and the wind keeps blowing out his matches. Finally he gets one going, only to have snow from a tree fall and put it out. It plays almost like a Laurel and Hardy moment.But that is right before the best part--and most action--of the whole movie. Right after he loses his fire, the sun starts coming up, and weeeeeee! Mitchum is so elated he starts running down the mountain side. Then he starts "body skiing". Then, all of a sudden, he falls down a big cliff, screaming like a woman, and is horribly killed. I kid you not.Then handsome Tab Hunter finds his dead body, but hears the cat "growling". He goes behind the bush and kills the cat. We never see that, because this cheesy production must have run out of cash for paying Mitchum so they couldn't afford a fake cat or renting one from a zoo.At the very end, the families old, nutty Indian worker babbles something very Indian-like about what death is all about. Some people don't realize even then that the old Indian is freaking Alfalfa from "Our Gang" in old Indian makeup.No, I am not making that up.One of the worst, slowest moving, dumb "westerns" you will ever see. I think some of the raters here must certainly be offspring of the original dumba%$ producers of this turkey, this rating is way high.

bkoganbing Like that other famous film family the Corleones, the Bridges consist of three brothers and a sister all living under one roof. AFter that any resemblance just doesn't exist.The dominant one here is Robert Mitchum one brutish lout of a man, but someone who probably has held the family together on this ranch up in the mountain area of Colorado. It's wintertime and these people are trapped by the snows in their valley. They've also got a mountain lion who's feasting on their stock.William Wellman who did so fabulously by Walter Van Tilburg Clark's other novel, The Oxbow Incident, misfires with this one. It's visually stunning, the color cinematography dealing with the winter images that are black and white. The only other colors you see are the red of Mitchum's jacket and the yellow of the fire and Tab Hunter and William Hopper's hair. Oh, let's not forget the blood.Some really great images are in this film. My favorite is the scene of the funeral which is photographed looking up from the waiting grave. Who's funeral, you have to see the film to find out.I have to say though, the Bridges family after a while were just not that interesting to me. The film itself doesn't come alive. It lost money big time for Batjac productions and John Wayne and Warner Brothers. Still I'm sure that this film, failure though it was, led to Robert Mitchum being cast in much better films like Night of the Hunter, Cape Fear, and Home from the Hill.For Mitchum completists only.

size100 I found this movie very dreary, distracting, and slow going. Don't know if this was the intent of the production team, but if it was they succeeded admirably. Basically all it was to me was the very depressing story of an annoyingly dysfunctional family with seemingly very little else to offer the world --- not the kind of neighbors I would like near my ranch. Production-wise I did like Robert Mitchum's red coat and the movie did bring out the ultimate dreariness of wide open snow country. Some people like this sort of slow going, dysfunctional-family in the movies stuff. I generally don't, especially when the movie drags on as this movie does. Never thought I would place any Robert Mitchum or Teresa Wright (despite her relatively minor role) movie on my not-to-watch-again list of older movies, but that's where this film goes. One viewing is barely tolerable, any more would be just too taxing. I guess I'm not "sophisticated" enough. It's not why I watch movies. Blah!