Every so often there comes an artist who works in a disrespected genre, yet who has enough talent and vision to almost make that whole genre seem respectable; at least in his own takes on it. And, when two such artists get together, their synergy is even greater.
Such was the fortuitous pairing of film producer Val Lewton (née Vladimir Leventin) and film director Jacques Tourneur, who double-handedly resurrected the RKO Radio Pictures film studio after the financial losses of the two artistically great but financially disastrous Orson Welles films they made: Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. They did so by collaborating on a series of horror films that, while intended to rival the box office of the Universal monster film series, starring Frankenstein's monster, Count Dracula, the Wolfman, and others, were several cuts above those films in terms of maturity, sexuality, artistry, and depth.
Their first film together was 1942's psychosexual film noir/horror classic Cat People, which became a critical and box office smash. Forty years later it was remade by Paul Schrader as a bad, silly, and sex-filled campy sendup starring Nastassia Kinski and Malcolm McDowell. The original is still far superior, and one of the best horror films ever made, despite being made on a shoestring budget, with B film talent, in less than a month, with spare sets from left over A films the studio was making.
The tale is rather interesting, and more believable than other such horror films of the day, for the characters are all real people who work and have real lives. They just don't take off on adventures at the drop of a hat. Also, Lewton and Tourneur were masters of suggesting horror, rather than showing it, for both knew that black and white photography was perfect for the netherworld they were to depict, and that the human mind could dredge up all sorts of horrors at the slightest prod, and even big budget films today cannot equal those monsters.
The tale opens with a gorgeous, young brunette Serbian sketch artist, Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), who lives in Manhattan and is obsessed with cats, and with the myth of cat people from her village. They were supposedly possessed women called mamalukes, and were purged by a Serbian King named John. One day, while drawing a panther at a zoo, she meets and falls in love with Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), a nautical engineer and ship designer who works for a big Manhattan firm. But she is frigid, for she fears that if a man kisses her, she will turn into a cat and kill him. Thus, when the couple marry, their marriage is unconsummated for months.
Oliver is bizarrely good-natured and understanding. He declares that he's led a carefree life, then he confides to a female co-worker, Alice Moore (Jane Randolph), that Irena has problems. She passive/aggressively suggests that Irena go see a psychiatrist friend of theirs, Dr. Louis Judd (Tom Conway), whom she knows is a sexual predator. The doctor dismisses her superstitions, yet has the hots for the sexy Irena, and tries to manipulate her, and the others. Alice and Oliver fall in love, as the sexless marriage of the Reeds deteriorates, and Conway intimates that Irena should be hospitalized, so that Oliver can annul their marriage, and he can have her all for himself.
Despite rejecting Oliver's love, when Irena grows wise to Alice's feelings, she stalks her three times, in the film's most memorable scenes. The first time is at night, in Central Park, and the sounds of high heels clicking, and shadows on the wall, and in the trees, is unnerving. Alice escapes when a bus pulls up, with a hissing sound. This is memorable, because she's looking to the left, the bus comes from the right. Its hiss sounds like a big cat's, which is what it would be in the hands of a lesser director than Tourneur, and which has, indeed, been copied hundreds of times since. The technique has become so popular that any time a film, in any genre, raises expectations, then dissipates with a subversion, the technique is called 'a bus.'
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