31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Cat People (1942)

I've loved black and white horror movies since I was a kid, sneaking out way past my bedtime to watch The Return of the Fly or Trog on "Weird" - a late night TV show out of Bangor, Maine. Later on I got to see a bunch of them on Saturday afternoon cable, often at my grandmother's house. Most of the old Universal Monster movies, a bunch of Allied Artists Pictures like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and even the occasional Hammer film - like The Mummy.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.)

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.

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.

31 Days, 31 Horror Movies: Night of the Demon (1957)

"It's in the trees. It's coming!"

This has been recommended to me a few times, including just this past week. It's a film I've seen, but not for a while. I do remember being completely pulled out of the movie when the  above quote occurred, because it's in the intro to Kate Bush's "Hounds of Love" and I never knew where that came from.

This is a movie I never saw before I was an adult, and I've always been slightly disappointed with that. It looks and feels like a movie I would have seen on late night TV or a Saturday afternoon, something that should have been a part of my childhood like Them! or Day of the Triffids. I want to have a sense of warm nostalgia watching it. I want to remember the demon like a child would, all teeth and claws and eyes - like the way the Triffids always seem bigger and more menacing in my memory than they are in the film. Can you miss something you never had? Is this way too philosophical for a 50's era satanic-panic flick? Probably. Let's move on...

The Medium
So, yeah. I was keen on watching this movie tonight - I just felt in the mood for a classic, black and white horror movie. This didn't appear to be available on any of the streaming services for free, BUT it looked like both versions (the original, longer version, Night of the Demon and the US Curse of the Demon) were available in one rental on Amazon. So I rented it.

Unfortunately, it's only the US version, AND it's cropped to 4:3 for television. It's not a particularly good print either.

In the end, I did get to watch the original on another site. Technically the British version is in public domain, so I don't think it was illegal - but it sure wasn't in HD. There ARE restored versions, but none, that I know of, are available in the US. (Apparently the French blu-ray is region free, though.)

The Movie

Night of the Demon starts out with a desperate man in a car, racing down dark roads in the middle of the night. This is professor Harrington, and his destination is the house of Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis). Harrington has planned to do an exposé of Karswell and his cult at a scientific convention. Karswell, an avowed Satanist and magician has set something monstrous in pursuit of Harrington, who pleads with him to call it off. Unfortunately, it's far too late, and after Harrington returns home something, some THING appears in the woods and chases him to his death.

"Hello? My car broke down and I'd just like to use your phone..."

This section of the film and a final one are additions by the producer against the strong objections of the director, Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, amongst others). Tourneur wanted a more ambiguous film, with the audience never being sure if the demon - or any other 'supernatural' incident in the film - was real, or only in the heads of the victims. That would probably be a creepy and interesting film on its own, but damn if that demon isn't effective! All teeth, horns, hair and eyes - it's really the most standout image of the film. Even with the slightly awkward walking effects (particularly in the opening sequence), it's still a horrific vision.

From there we're introduced to John Holden (Dan Andrews), Harrington's colleague and partner in the investigation of Karswell's cult. He's disturbed to hear of Harrington's death, but waves off any suggestion of the supernatural and vows to continue with the research and the exposé. During a research trip to the British Museum's library he meets Karswell who gives him a warning - and a little something extra as well.

"You'll find him under V for 'villain'"

The vast majority of the film is a kind of cat and mouse game between Karswell and Holden, only Holden refuse to believe he's the mouse. His dogged insistence in the rational - in Science! with an exclamation point - is never really the strength he thinks it is. His own colleagues urge him to keep an open mind, but he laughs at them.  Professor Harrington's niece, Joanna (Peggy Cummins) even shows him - through a diary - that Harrington himself had come to believe that something supernatural was after him. None of this makes an impact on the ablative armor of Holden's skepticism. Even a demonstration of Karswell's powers - a sudden windstorm at a garden party - is shrugged off, much to the black magician's annoyance. Karswell declares that Holden will die in three days.

Dammit, Karswell, stuff like this is why people hate clowns.

It's not until Holden breaks into Karswell's house (because nothing says 'rational actor' like a little B&E) that his steadfast insistence on rational explanations is shaken. Because there IS more than the a housecat on guard in the study. And there IS something more than swamp gas chasing him through the woods (he was warned!). Earlier in the film Holden discovers that Karswell has slipped him a piece of parchment on which are written several runic symbols. It becomes apparent - through reading the diary, a séance, and interviews with a family involved in the cult - that the parchment serves as a kind of death note. Anyone who has been given such a thing will die. And before he knows it, Holden's three days are down to just hours.

And it'll take him two days just to find his way out of this hotel.

Holden's understanding of the stakes - and his only chance at survival - become clear during a hypnotherapy session at the scientific conference. The subject is the only survivor of one of Karswell's curses and, before throwing himself out a window (in retrospect sodium pentothal AND methamphetamine was probably overkill) the poor man reveals the only way to survive is to return the parchment to the person who gave it to you. Holden rushes out of the conference determined to find Karswell - because it's already night, and the demon is about to appear again.

It's weird little details I like in this movie. In the opening scene, Karswell and his mother are playing cribbage. I THINK she's actually winning, which is interesting given how things play out. Any time Karswell works his 'magic' on Holden, Holden's vision blurs and distorts (an effect that also occurs when the demon appears). The way the parchment flutters and jerks through the air - it's fishing line, I know it is, but it works really well. And it's a simple dubbing effect, but I even like the way the medium's voice changes during the séance.

The singing? Not so much.

MacGinnis' Karswell is actually my favorite character, because he's such a baby. He's a man who's used magic to gain exceptional wealth and power, but he's also incredibly petulant and reactive when things don't go his way. He goes from childish glee at performing magic for children to another, pettier sort of glee at conjuring up the windstorm that ruins the same party. He's alternatingly didactic, annoyed, magnanimous, scared and arrogant. In other words, he's interesting - and as much as Holden is cast in the 50's science hero mold and Joanna is a strong, educated scientific mind in her own right, they're kind of flat in comparison. I like them - and I like Holden's scientific colleagues even more - but Karswell is just more complicated. Hell, Holden's smug arrogance for much of the film annoyed me almost as much as it did Karswell.

Also, all the good villains should have a cat, don't you think?

The film is really well made, shot, acted and edited. The only things I didn't like were small things - I've been to Stonehenge, for instance, and there are no runes upon those stones. (Of course we weren't allowed to go as close as Holden goes, so maybe I missed them!) There's a moment in the train when Holden appears to be writing something on a spare piece of parchment - as if he's going to do a double cross with Karswell - but it's not followed up on. (Maybe a leftover from the less supernatural version of the film.) They're minor things, though, and overall I was impressed with the film.

The Bottom Line

This is now my favorite Jacques Tourneur movie, even more than I Walked With a Zombie. It's got great mood, buildup and characters - and I know he didn't care for it, but I love the demon as well.

As an FYI - Night of the Demon is based on the short story "Casting the Runes" by M. R. James. If you're interested, the text is in the public domain and can be read via a number
 of sources. Libravox also has a couple of audio versions.