Cat People (DVD)

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Val Lewton's is one of those only-in-Hollywood stories, a luminous star in horror circles who practically came out of nowhere, shone brightly for a relative moment, and then was seen no more.

Born Vladimir Leventin in Russia in 1904, he changed his name several times while writing for various publications. He finally settled into film editing among other things in the 1930s, where eventually he came to the attention of RKO Radio Pictures, who were looking for someone to produce a series of low-budget horror films. From 1942 to 1946, Lewton made a string of such films, all of them reasonably successful and some of them becoming minor classics. But before he could go on to do much else, ill health caused his early death in 1951.

While Lewton had small, B-movie budgets to work with at RKO, he always thought beyond them. Hiring the best possible directors and writers and frequently reworking the scripts himself, he brought more than horror to the screen. His movies were often eerie suspense thrillers rather than outright shockers, which is probably why they are still so highly regarded today. Owing to the demands of the trade, however, he was pressured to give them appropriately sensational, macabre titles, things like "The Leopard Man," "Isle of the Dead," "The Body Snatcher," and my favorite, "I Walked With a Zombie." The two movies combined here as a double feature are a couple of his best, "Cat People" and "The Curse of the Cat People."

"Cat People":
Made in 1942 "Cat People" was Lewton's first movie for RKO, and it got the series off to a flying start. While never outright scary, it is spooky as all heck and extends a dark, moody atmosphere throughout. These would be Lewton trademarks. He would insist upon creating suspense and chills through subtlety, imagination, creepy effects, ominous music, and odd camera angles. He was lighting for film noir before there was a "film noir." It's what you don't see in a Val Lewton production rather than what you do see that makes it frightening.

Anyway, RKO's bosses were still reeling from the money they lost on Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane" the previous year and needed some cheapie horror flicks to recoup their losses. Little did they know they were going to get a few more prestigious products in the process. In fact, they didn't know how good the Lewton films were any more than they understood the importance of "Citizen Kane"; such is the shortsightedness of Hollywood executives.

For "Cat People" Lewton had a script by DeWitt Booden ("The Enchanted Cottage," "I Remember Mama"), a director in Jack Tourneur ("Out of the Past," "The Flame and the Arrow," "The Comedy of Terrors"), a star in Simone Simon ("Cavalcade d'amour," "The Devil and Daniel Webster"), music by Roy Webb ("My Favorite Wife," "Bringing Up Baby"), and cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca ("Little Men," "Back to Bataan"). These people were among the most-accomplished filmmakers in the business, and despite the film's budget, they created a first-class product.

The movie opens at the zoo, where a young woman, Irena Dubrovna (Simon), is sketching the big cats. Shadows are important almost from the beginning, and even though the sun is shining, there is a menacing air about the place; she seems strangely drawn to the panther in particular. At the zoo she meets a man, Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), a marine architect, a ship designer, and they fall in love almost at first sight. Within the year they marry, without Oliver really knowing much about his new bride.

What he does come to find out is that she's a little...odd. She grew up in the mountains of Serbia amidst legends of demon cats. She's afraid of "evil" things in her past, evil things in her, and she hints of people in her village descended from beasts. According to her beliefs, if she were to kiss or make love to a man, she would be driven by her own evil to turn into a cat herself and kill him. As a result, Irena and Oliver sleep in separate bedrooms, and it is intimated that they have never consummated their marriage. Needless to say, Oliver isn't overjoyed by this relationship and insists that she see a psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), about her obsessions. Meanwhile, Irena is becoming increasingly jealous of a woman, Alice Moore (Jane Randolph), who works in her husband's office
and has a secret crush on him.

We have to wait more than halfway through the film before any real terror strikes, and then we never know for sure what happens, the filmmakers always letting the viewers' minds fill in the details of the action. Even the movie's ending is ambiguous, which is perhaps why it has continued to fascinate audiences.

Smith is rather stiff as the husband, but Simon is well cast. The French actress is at once innocent and angelic yet sultry and malign. Her demeanor seems harmless and at the same time dangerous. Perhaps the most notable character, however, is Conway's Dr. Judd, a smooth, slick, unctuous snake who prides himself as a ladies' man in the manner of George Sanders in "Rebecca."

Give this film a chance and like the events it describes, it will sneak up on you. Universal remade the film in 1982 by playing up the sex and violence angles, but the new version didn't improve upon the original film's eerie atmospherics.

"The Curse of the Cat People":
The top brass at RKO were so delighted by the public response to "Cat People" that two years later they asked Lewton to produce a sequel. They expected to get another supernatural chiller, with people turning into panthers and killing folks in the streets. Boy, were they disappointed.

RKO hated the film.

Audiences and critics, though, were divided in their opinions, just as they are today. Because instead of a horror thriller, "The Curse of the Cat People" is a sweet, psychological fantasy about childhood fears. If you know that going in, you won't be quite so let down that no one is torn apart limb from limb.