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Cat Scare: Difference between revisions
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A cat scare is a strong ''build up'' of high tension, followed by a fright from [[Defanged Horrors|something harmless]] to give us a sense of release. Our heroine now tip-toeing down a dark hallway to escape a serial killer she knows is in the house- a door in the hallway ''slowly opens''... Our heroine pauses, watching a door swing wider- she's expecting the serial killer anytime now! As a ''cat'' jumps out, hissing wildly. A '''Cat Scare'''. Horror ain't pretty. She sighs with relief, only to ''confront'' the real killer!
As [[Roger Ebert]] points out in his book of Hollywood Cliches, the cat often enters shot, hissing and raving, airborne at chest height. Apparently it has been ''thrown'' into shot by a technician. (Hence another common name for this phenomenon: "the [[spring-loaded cat]];" in particular because the feline in question often appears to be deployed as soon as the door / chest / other suitable object is opened).
An increasingly common variant is having the cat somehow reveal the real trap. As in "aww, it's just a cat." "Hang on, all
Moving toward [[Discredited Trope]] territory, but still shows up done straight from time to time. A common play is to time after the '''Cat Scare''' when the audience was starting to relax to have the real threat suddenly appear.
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