Cat People (1942)

Film: Cat People (1942)
Stars: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

We're going to take a brief break from the Universal monster movies in our month of horror, and head over to the RKO lot today.  There, Val Lewton, the producer & writer of this film, was crafting his own sense of horror films to counter-balance the Universal films of the era.  But while the horror movies at Universal feel in retrospect like they're a little cheesy or gimmicky, that's not the case with Lewton, and certainly not the case with our movie today (arguably his best-known work) Cat People.  I chose this film because it's one of the more famous horror movies of the era I've never seen (our ultimate goal for this series, after all, is to not just complete the Universal canon, but also to fill in the gaps in my horror movies of the era), but watching it, Cat People in many ways is a psychological thriller more than a monster picture, teasing whether or not it's a horror movie until the movie's final moments.

(Spoilers Ahead) Irena (Simon) and Oliver (Smith) meet at a zoo, while Irena is sketching a black panther.  They start a flirtation, but Oliver realizes that Irena holds some superstitions related to her childhood village-she's convinced cats are evil, specifically due to a legend from her youth about King John of Serbia & how he killed a number of her citizens who used witchcraft to become cats themselves.  Though Oliver is dismissive of this fact, strange things do happen around Irena-cats hate her, reacting strangely in her presence, and she becomes increasingly obsessed that she's going to carry the curse of her village by turning into a cat person.  They marry, but it's an unhappy marriage, and Oliver persuades Irena to visit a psychiatrist, Dr. Judd (Conway).  While all of this happens, Oliver begins to fall in love with his assistant Alice (Randolph), whom he eventually loves enough to ask Irena for a divorce.

I'm going to take a break here to discuss the film's quality a little bit, because at this point in the movie it's really not clear to the audience whether or not Irena is going mad (and driving those around her, particularly Alice, crazy with suspicion), or if she's correct-that she's going to become a cat person.  This is rare in a film of this era, because there's a genuine thrill in not knowing how this movie will go from this point.  Most monster movies usually laid out their cards right away, and by this period the Universal horror films had become almost comically formulaic.  But Cat People delivers on actual scares as the movie goes as we learn that Irena is, in fact, a cat person, as she transforms finally in the last act of the movie, first letting Alice & Oliver go for begging forgiveness of her, and then murdering Dr. Judd who tries to seduce her, potentially having destroyed her marriage to get to her.  In the final act, Irena releases the black panther from the beginning of the movie, who strikes her down (it's not entirely clear if she lives or dies), and the panther is killed by a passing car, with Oliver & Alice assuming at this point that the panther is Irena herself, now dead and out of their lives.

The movie has received mixed reviews since its inception.  Some people are in love with the camera angles, mood, and thrills of the film, and I'm mostly in their camp.  The scene of Alice in a pool, hearing the growling of what we learn is Irena is frightening, and the building tension totally works.  Also-the camerawork is great & I love the idea of a horror film being lensed like a film noir (considering the rise of "elevated horror" some filmmaker needs to try this again today by making a black-and-white horror film).  The acting isn't great.  No one except Simon is trying anything unusual (her stylized acting I found fascinating, even if others have found it stilted, though I wonder if their treatment of her work is marred by accusations she was "difficult" on set & that other than the two Cat People films her career never really went anywhere), and the ending's ambiguity is probably a little too ambiguous for its own good.  Still, this is a great, moody film (I need to watch the sequel for a future series as I hear good things about it as well), and one well worth your time this Halloween season.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death