I didn't get to see a lot of the RKO horror films, though (King Kong being the exception). I have a vague memory of I Walked With a Zombie - Darby Jones as Carrefour made an impression - but I mixed it up with White Zombie for the longest time. I didn't see any other Val Lewton (or Jacques Tourneur) films until I was an adult, trying to fill in gaps in my horror viewing experience (a process that continues).
This is a roundabout way of explaining that this is probably only the second or third time I've seen the original Cat People.
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| I know, right? |
As an 'I keep finding new things about movies I've already seen' aside - I didn't realize Alan Ormsby worked on the screenplay for the 1982 remake! Ormsby worked on Deathdream, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things and my favorite Nazi zombie movie, Shockwaves (as writer, writer/actor, and makeup artist, respectively).
The Medium
I've recently ditched cable for YouTube TV and one of the benefits has been the addition of Turner Classic Movies to the lineup. I was able to watch the film commercial free with a good quality picture.
I know there's a Criterion Collection release I should probably check out. (I'm extremely annoyed with myself that I didn't pick up the Warner Video Val Lewton Horror collection when it was a reasonable price.)
The Movie
Oliver, a bland, if handsome, engineer meets Serbian immigrant Irena at the Central Park Zoo where she is making sketches of a black panther. Intrigued with each other, they form a friendship and then a romance. Unfortunately, Irena harbors a strange obsession with a legend from her homeland. King John drove the devil-worshippers out of her village, but the 'wisest and most wicked' fled into the mountains. These women were actually cat people and would turn into great cats when aroused or angered. Irena believes that she is descended from those witches.
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| This woman seconds the motion. |
Despite this belief, which Oliver treats as an idiosyncrasy even though it keeps them from so much as kissing, the couple eventually marries. It's only after Irena accidentally frightens a pet bird to death - and then feeds it to the panther at the zoo - that he begins to take her seriously, suggesting she see a psychiatrist.
Dr Judd is a pretty terrible psychiatrist. Pro tip for any mental health professionals out there - don't hit on your married patients. Or any patients, really. In addition to the unwanted advances Irena gets an earful of "mind cankers" and "childhood traumas." Afterwards Irena finds that Oliver has told his assistant Alice about her problems, a betrayal of trust that seems lost on her husband.
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| "I didn't get the ending of Inception, either." |
Oliver is, truth be told, kind of an idiot - and when Alice confesses that she's actually in love with him he somehow manages to make it all about himself, talking about how he's never been unhappy before and how he's not even sure he's in love with Irena. In a just world Irena and Alice would leave Oliver behind and travel the world together feeding dead birds to caged panthers.
Anyway.
When Irena sees Alice and Oliver together at a restaurant she waits until they separate and then begins to follow Alice. This leads to one of the most tense scenes in the film as both women move through pools of light and shadow, Irena getting closer and closer until we don't even see her emerge from the shadows anymore. There's a sound, something indefinable, and Alice begins to panic. A loud hiss and growl startles her (and us) only to be revealed as an arriving bus. Alice boards, relieved.
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| Don't get too comfortable. |
Elsewhere a groundskeeper at the zoo finds dead sheep and suggestive prints - pawprints that seem to turn into the imprints of a woman's shoes.
Things move somewhat predictably forward from here. Irena grows more isolated and jealous, Oliver and Alice conspire against her with Dr. Judd, there's one of the creepiest pool scenes ever shot, and something like a great cat begins to stalk - and kill - those who have angered Irena.
As a take on the werewolf myth Cat People is pretty understated. Unlike the Universal films the creature is mostly hinted at. A growl, a number of suggestive shadows. There's no drawn-out transformation scene or awkward half-transformed creature. There is a woman who thinks she is becoming a panther and there is a panther. Whether she's right or merely disturbed is open to interpretation. (Mostly - I think it's clear what the film wants us to think.)
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| It wants us to think late night swims are a bad idea. |
Cat People was made on a relatively low budget ($134,000 - roughly $2 million in 2018 dollars), but it looks great. First time producer Val Lewton makes every dollar count and Jacques Tourneur knows how to make the most out of a limited number of locations (and a metric ton of suggestive shadows).
I think James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein was the first movie where I really noticed lighting in a film. Doctor Praetorius in the crypt - brrr.... But I remember after I watched Cat People for the first time that I found myself thinking that Tourneur was a filmmaker who also knew the value of light and dark. The light tables in the office, the areas of shadow near the bus stop, that whole scene where Alice is stalked in the pool. The shadows are damn near a separate character in the movie.
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| A supporting character, at least. |
The Bottom Line
There are depths to Cat People - you could write a paper (and I'm sure people have) talking about gender roles and the virgin/whore dichotomy in the 1940's or the nature of evil and whether it's something that can be inherited. That's not what I take away from the film at the end of the day, though, even if subtext does enrich the experience.
No, for me it's all about the shadows, man - the SHADOWS.
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