(I'm not sure what board to post this on. It's European, but doesn't strike me as typical "EuroCult" material, and it's horrific, but not outright horror)

. . . it might resemble Felidae, a mainstream 1994 German film based on best-selling novel that's A) a gruesome serial killer thriller involving a perverse cult, raunchy sex, and a metaphor for a Holocaust, and B) a cartoon about talking cats that's animated in a style right out of The Secret of N.I.M.H and All Dogs Go To Heaven.

Actually, it's better plotted and has more vivid characterization than the average giallo, but it's at least as perverse. Here's the trailer, grainy low rez, but in the original German with fan subtitles. Yes, Klaus Maria Brandhauer is one of the voice actors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8ZGTrgiCLU

This guy's posted the entire film to YouTube. It's the English dub from the German DVD, unfortunately, and it's a bit squeezed, but the resolution is better than the trailer. That's Boy George singing the title song (which is in Englsh even in the German release).

http://www.youtube.com/user/Elementroar

SPOILERS for the film contained in the clips below.

While these cats may talk, have a more complicated social structure than the real thing, and be inclined to solve murder mysteries, they also screw like, well, cats. When Francis meets a femme feline fatale, it's sex first, questions later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKWnLhMSur4

And here's a sample of just how horrific this gets. Cat-moll Solitaire is found with her unborn kittens ripped from her body.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_AE3IxpNgM[I][/I]

This is really great!

Thanks for sharing.

How weird. It's like Gay Purreee done as a murder mystery.

A particularly gruesome murder mystery in which, for instance, the protagonist has nightmares of Gregor Mendel (the Augustine priest and 19th century "Father of Genetics") making an army of rotting cat corpses dance like marionettes!

According to Wikipedia, Turkish-German novelist Akif Pirinçci (who co-scripted the film) has written five novels in the "Felidae" series, starting in 1989, but only the first two have been translated into English. They certainly seem less cozy and more imaginative than most English-language "cat mysteries" (a popular subgenre). Of course, animation is the only way the book could have been adapted to film, but the Disney/Bluth style does create a certain amount of cognitive dissonance.

The Pal, Region 2 German DVD, which has no subs but does have the English dub track, is available on eBay and from Amazon resellers for around $30. I'm very tempted to order it, with the lack of subtitles being the main reason for my hesitation. I'm amused that an English dub was ever prepared (and while the voice acting sounds inferior to the German in the snippets I've heard, it's clear that some care was taken with it). Did anyone ever think that this could possibly get an American release?

http://www.xploitedcinema.com also has it. I have to confess that I'm tempted to put this on my tax refund wishlist.

I'm also thinking of checking out the subtitled, uncut version of the Italian sci-fi film, NIRVANA although the gutted, dubbed version I saw made me unsure as to whether or not a longer version would be worthwhile.

And given where an extended discussion of FELIDAE may go, I suspect that it would be better suited to one of the Cult forums or Sci-Fi/Horror.