Title: Cat People
Year of Release: 1942
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Length: 73 mins
Starring: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph, Jack Holt
God knows there are enough horror movies about werewolves, vampires and zombies. In my humble opinion, there just aren’t enough films about cats or, for that matter, people descended from an ancient tribes of cat people who metamorphose into panthers when sexually aroused. Enter Cat People. This classic from the war years was produced by a chap called Val Lewton, who had just been named head of the ominous-sounding ‘horror unit’ at RKO studios formed to challenge Universal’s stranglehold on the burgeoning horror film industry. His brief was simple; make horror films. Each one had to come in under a budget or $150,000 and run for under 75 minutes, thereby ensuring they were tailor made for the trend of marketing films as double features. Over the next five years, Lewton would deliver a string of genre-defining classics including I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Leopard Man (1943) and Boris Karloff’s Isle of the Dead (1945). All these seminal titles stemmed from the unprecedented commercial success of Cat People, which despite being made in just 18 days raked in $4 million (this figure has been disputed) making it RKO’s top moneyspinner of the year. It has since become known as a landmark movie of the era, and in 1993 was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry. It led to a sequel, Curse of the Cat People (1944) and a later remake starring Nastassja Kinski and featuring a soundtrack by David Bowie.
The film opens at Central Park Zoo, New York City, where young Serbian-born fashion illustrator Irena Dubrovna (Simon) is drawing a black panther. She catches the eye of marine engineer Oliver Reed (Smith), who strikes up a flirty conversation. Irena invites him to her apartment for tea, where Oliver is intrigued by a statue of a medieval warrior on horseback impaling a large cat with his sword. Irena informs him that the figure is King John of Serbia, and that the cat is a metaphorical depiction representing evil. According to legend, the residents of her home village gradually turned to witchcraft and devil worship after being enslaved by the Mameluks, and when King John drove the Mameluks out and saw what the villagers had become, he had them “put to the sword”. However, “the wisest and the most wicked” escaped into the mountains, the implication being, of course, that Irena’s ancestors were among them. Oliver dismisses these as “fairy tales,” and now deeply infatuated, buys Irena a kitten as a gift. When it hisses at her, she insists on taking it back to the pet shop where all the animals go wild when she enters, which should have been a red flag. Irena gradually reveals that she believes she is descended from the ‘cat people’ of her village, and that will transform into a panther if aroused. Despite that, or maybe because of that, Oliver proposes and the two are married. However, afraid of the consequences, she is reluctant to consummate the marriage, the situation compounded when she tries to touch a bird and inadvertently frightens it to death. Oliver is understanding and patient at first, then as his frustration grows, he persuades Irena to see a psychiatrist (Conway). It’s no use, and Oliver is effectively pushed into the arms of his beautiful assistant, Alice (Randolph). Irena doesn’t like that. She doesn’t like it one bit. Hell hath no fury like a woman descended from an ancient tribe of Serbian cat people who metamorphose into panthers when aroused scorned.
Darkly insidious, Cat People is a masterclass in foreshadowing. At one point Alice shivers, prompting Oliver to ask her if she is cold. She replies, “A cat just walked over my grave.” Simone Simon was cast in the role of Irena by Lewton himself who commented that, “I’d like to have a girl with a little kitten face, cute and soft and cuddly, and seemingly not at all dangerous.” Perhaps as a reaction to RKO’s initial misgivings, the movie was generally panned by critics. Wanda Hale of the New York Daily News said it, “Tries hard to be a melodrama… but it doesn’t try hard enough”, while Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described it as a “Labored and obvious attempt to induce shock.” He (among others) also slated Simon’s acting, stating that actresses who are trying to portray “[feline] temptations – in straight horror pictures, at least – should exercise their digits a bit more freely than does Simone Simon.” Simon herself, along with fellow female lead Jane Randolph, publicly expressed displeasure at her performance.
Nevertheless, in more recent times, Cat People has attained ‘classic’ status. Noted film critic Chris Fujiwara dubbed it “A perfect film,” adding that even its flaws “have become classic,” and dismissing the withering criticisms of other reviewers. He further stated that Cat People, “Is still contagious; the viewer can still share the surprise and pleasure the film evoked in audiences who discovered this unheralded B horror film on its initial release”. He wasn’t alone in his thinking, as in 2006 Roger Ebert included it in his list of Great Movies noting that the film was, “Frightening in an eerie, mysterious way that was hard to define [and had] an undertone of sexual danger that was more ominous because it was never acted upon”.
Trivia Corner:
The suits at RKO were allegedly very dissatisfied with the finished product, suggesting it was too subtle and could not possibly compete with Universal’s more immediate brand of horror that gave us such delights as The Mummy (1932), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1942) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).
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