The film was so popular that it made over $4 million, after being produced for about $140,000 — a nearly thirtyfold profit. Imagine a routine Hollywood horror film, with a budget of $40 million — it would have to gross over a billion dollars to be as successful an investment.
Two years later a sequel, The Curse Of the Cat People, was released. That film was the first directorial feature for Robert Wise, who would direct future classics like The Day The Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, The Sound Of Music, and The Andromeda Strain. It is also included on the Warner Brothers DVD of Cat People, along with its own commentary and features. The two films are part of a five-disk, nine film (including one documentary on the works of Lewton) package called The Val Lewton Horror Collection, which has all the classics made between 1942 and 1946.
The features for Cat People are a theatrical trailer and a commentary by horror film maven and historian Greg Mank. Mank gives a sterling commentary. Although scripted, it is concise, ebullient, informative, and punctuated with several interludes from a recorded phone conversation with Simon. Were all commentaries as good as this even the worst films would be enjoyable DVD experiences. The DVD print of the film, however, is solid, at best. There are several instances where spots and scratches are abundant.
Of course, success breeds all sorts of ridiculous claims, such as bad critics who see Irena as a lesbian; thus her frigidity, the approach of the other cat woman at her wedding, and the stalking of Alice. Of course, the film's every frame undercuts such claims. But the film is so good at letting people imbue scarier things into it than are seen, for Tourneur and Lewton know that the average viewer can scare themselves better than they could; that bad critics will read much more into it than is seen is only natural.
Cat People is a great treatise on human loneliness, for few film characters have ever been more alone than Irena Dubrovna. Only Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle - another transplanted New Yorker with a violent streak and sexual problems - may surpass her. It also starts and ends with epigraphs, something that European arts films only picked up on later.
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