Cat People

This 1942 chiller is the first horror film which producer Val Lewton made for RKO Pictures, although upon being presented with the finished product the studio bosses remarked that the real horror about Cat People is the fact that it doesn’t seem to be a horror film at all… Although this might be true it can’t be denied that the power of suggestive and psychological terror applied in the film has stood the test of time, while Nicholas Musuraca’s suitably eerie b/w photography provides the perfect atmosphere.

Simone Simon plays Irena Dubrovna, a young Serbian woman who lives in New York City where she works as a fashion designer. Torn between the fast and modern word of New York and her native superstitions, she believes to be a descendant of an ancient race of people who turn into wild cats when sexually aroused. During an outing in Central Park Zoo, Irena draws several sketches of black panthers and by doing so catches the attention of Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), a handsome marine engineer who is intrigued enough to start a friendly conversation. Irena too takes an instant liking to the man and invited him back to her apartment for tea (presumably New York City was a lot less dangerous back then…). At her cosy apartment, Oliver once again is intrigued… this time by a statue depicting a medieval warrior on horseback while impaling a big cat with his sword. What he doesn’t know is that back in the zoo, one of Irena’s discarded sketches depicted a similar scenario. Sensing that Oliver wants to know more about the statue she tells him about the meaning and of her people, and ancient curses and superstitions. Irene confesses that she feels lonely and an outsider in the big city though we also know that this is about to change rather soon. To make her feel less lonely while he is at work he decides to buy her a kitten but it merely hisses at the young woman and hides in a corner. Irena admits that cats don’t seem to like her… When Oliver takes Irena to the pet shop to exchange the kitten for a budgie, all the animals in the shop become instantly terrified. Things get stranger still when Irena confesses her irrational fear of turning into a wild cat whenever she’s aroused by passion but despite her strange behaviour, which Oliver dismisses as an old Serbian superstition, the two get married.

Marital bliss is rather short-lived, however, when Irena continues with her seemingly irrational behaviour and insists on sleeping in a separate bedroom from her husband, who eventually convinces her to make an appointment with Dr. Judd (Tom Conway), a respected psychiatrist. He too comes to the conclusion that Irena suffers from some sort of hysteria. In his despair, Oliver confesses his marital problems to his assistant at work, the attractive Alice (Jane Randolph). What he doesn’t know is that Alice secretly is in love with him… When Irene returns to the apartment and finds Alice and Oliver in conversation she senses that the two had been talking about her ‘problem’ and later that evening makes it clear to Oliver that she considers this to be an act of betrayal against her. From then on it’s downhill not only for the marriage but Irena’s animal instincts break out full force when she begins to see Alice as a ‘territorial threat’…

There is never any visible horror or gore throughout the film, it’s merely hinted at – even when in a later scene one of the principal characters gets killed by Irene it is done only with shadows and screams. The famous scene in which Alice takes a late-night dip in a swimming pool, only to be terrorized by strange noises and the shadow of a huge prowling cat along the pool edge is genius! The actual shock arrives when Irene – back in human form – suddenly appears and reassures the scared Alice there is nothing to fear. Minutes later, when Alice reaches for her bathrobe, she finds it torn and shredded by something which appears to be claws…

Beautifully restored, this sophisticated ‘horror’ offers some splendid SPECIAL FEATURES including a feature-length documentary about ‘Val Lewton – The Man in the Shadows’.