The 31 Days of Hell now brings you a review the 1942 feature, Cat People.
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| "I'm not fully naked under this water." |
Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 classic horror film Cat People is astonishingly ahead of its
time that still manages to unnerve in unexpected ways and provides further
proof that sometimes the best scares are created by what you hear as opposed to
see. Stylized as horror noir in glorious
40s black-and-white film, Cat People
follows Irena (Simone Simon), a Serbian fashion designer who marries a marine
engineer named Oliver (Kent Smith) who finds herself unable to love him back
out of an irrational fear she may transform into a panther when her passions
are aroused. Subtle clues throughout the
film seem to suggest this quirky femme may in fact be a feline, notably when
she enters a pet store and the animals react violently. She encounters a strange woman who calls her
a ‘sister’ while being tormented by recurring thoughts of panthers. Though Oliver tries to play it her way, the
burden becomes too much to bear and he begins an affair with one of his
co-workers, sparking Irena’s jealous rage and violent feral tendencies.
The best horror films refrained from using music to inform
the audience, and Cat People because
of this approach. Relying more heavily
on natural sounds, dark shadows and characters walking down isolated hallways,
the classic old dark house trope is exploited to delicious effect here. Cat
People even features a jump scare, rarely seen in films from that era, with
the volume escalating to an ear piercing level as the protagonist is startled
by something neither cat nor human in form.
Equally effective is the timing, drawing out the preamble to an attack
to build tension and fear with many extended takes of uncomfortably dead
air. Part of the charm that is Cat People are the red herrings, teasing
viewers with potential scares that never happen by depicting a character
entering a room where terror surely should strike. With almost all the tools of Hollywood
melodrama at play, Cat People even
provides an animated dream sequence, involving us in Irena’s surreal cat
fantasies eating away at her stability.
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| "I came here looking for crack and all I found was two male hookers and a rancid bucket of chicken." |
As with any film pushing the envelope, Cat People was derided by critics as nothing more than prurient
exploitation. From the presses, Cat People was deemed a failure until
ticket sales prompted critics to rethink their reviews. Not every point taken against Cat People was necessarily wrong
however, as the leading male Oliver conveniently overlooks for the sake of the
script what is painfully obvious to the audience regarding Irena’s ruse. The stereotypical cigarette-smoking
psychiatrist analyzing Irena’s peculiar behavior, speaking in hushed tones with
a sense of prowess, unintentionally manages with his scenes to achieve a quiet
hilarity. Still, one is taken aback by
how well the scares hold up today. The
sequence where the panther footprints on the pavement slowly morph back into
high heel shoes is still as unnerving today as it was then. While most filmgoers admit difficulty in
taking elder thriller tactics with a straight face, it is telling and
revelatory that Cat People’s code of
silence as a tool of anticipation may in fact have preceded Alfred Hitchcock
after all.
-Andrew Kotwicki