Cat People (1942)
HORROR-THON 2020 • POD PEOPLE
7/10
DIRECTOR: Jacques Tourneur
RELEASED: 2020
STARRING: Simone Simon, Tom Conway, Kent Smith
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 13 minutes
FOR RENT OR PURCHASE: Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, YouTube TV
SCARE LEVEL: Two great scares, a lot of dread
WOULD I WATCH IT ON A RAINY NIGHT: Absolutely
The monster in this movie is a fashion illustrator who fears fur coats and draws panthers at the zoo. You never really see her change, and you don’t need to.
Irena is a Serbian-born fashion artist living in New York. While sketching the panther at the Central Park Zoo, she meets Oliver, a nice, bland engineer. They fall in love fast and get married.
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There’s a problem. Irena believes she comes from an old village line of women who turn into panthers when they’re aroused or jealous. So she won’t kiss her husband. She won’t do anything, really.
Oliver sends her to a psychiatrist. He also starts spending a lot of time with his coworker Alice, who is extremely understanding. Irena notices. Soon Alice is being followed on a dark street at night. Then she’s swimming alone in a basement pool, and something starts pacing the edge of the water in the dark.
The psychiatrist decides the best treatment is kissing Irena himself. He very quickly learns she wasn’t exaggerating.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
This movie had a super tiny budget, and every shortcut became a style. You almost never see the cat. You hear it, you see a shadow, or you see Alice’s face. Your brain is filling in the rest, and of course, your brain is much scarier than any costume.
Then there’s the bus. Alice walks alone at night, footsteps behind her, then silence. Then a bus pulls up with a hiss that makes you jump out of your skin. It’s widely credited as the first “real jump scare,” and horror nerds apparently still call the movie “the Lewton Bus” after producer Val Lewton. Every cheap fake-out you’ve ever screamed at is its descendant.
I spent the whole movie on Irena’s side. She tells everyone who she is and what she’s afraid of from the very first scene. Her husband answers by cozying up to a coworker and sending her to a man who tries to kiss her. The actual villain is more the men around her, and the cat is almost a side character. Also, Irena’s wardrobe is excellent. She wears sharp ‘40s tailoring and a fur coat like a warning label. She’s the most stylish woman in any 1940s monster movie, and I will not be taking questions.
Fun fact for your next dinner party
The budget of the movie was so tight that sets from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons were reused.