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Watch: Michael Reich’s She’s Allergic to Cats Trailer and Short Film Quarantine Dog Good Boy
Filmmaker Michael Reich has a thing for both household pets (and vermin) as well as bleeding VHS-damaged color schemes. The former dog groomer’s debut feature She’s Allergic to Cats, which premiered in ’16 at Fantasia Fest but is only now seeing a digital release via Gigantic Pictures, is about, natch, a socially awkward dog groomer (Michael Pinkney) attempting to deal with a rat infestation in his apartment while making an all-cats remake of Carrie. Sonja Kinski is the love interest whose cat may be the answer to the rodent issue. As the trailer above attests, Reich is fond of distressed analog looks; to wit, the feature was shot “in 4K on Red Cameras and run through DVD players, MiniDV, and VHS tapes,” according to the press release.
These days, filmmakers run the gauntlet on release — IG story chats, Reddit AMAs, Twitter takeovers. Reich’s maneuvers are more original. He entered and won Talkhouse’s Without Precedent Film Festival with a canine-centered quarantine short that riffs, distressingly, on one of the more upsetting bits of COVID-19 news lately.
Also for The Talkhouse, Reich wrote a guest post on another species currently in the pandemic news — landlords — except his is an unlikely love letter.
Deeper cuts can be found online at YouTube, where the director has archived some of the videos of the L.A. punk scene he made for his website Videothing. Like this one of The Slits in L.A. at the El Rey in ’07.
She’s Allergic to Cats is out now on iTunes and Amazon, and it will also be streamed this Thursday, April 30, by the Laser Blast Digital Society in association with Spectacle Theater. The free “live premiere” will be accompanied by a live chat by Reich and will take place over Spectacle’s Twitch channel.
