Ten Statements About....THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944)

Apparently in the afterlife, you're made to dress as if you were
in the school play....

"You don't know about this woman, my first wife Irena. You don't know what happened to her just because she told lies to herself and believed them."

1) And here we have, yet again, another film that couldn't have been made in the here and now, simply because this film chooses to move forward from the original while violently changing its tone away from a horror and into a family fantasy steeped in psychology and fairy tale mythology. Hell, I wonder how they pulled it off back in 1944.

2) Maybe it was her accent, but after watching this I wonder why Simone Simon didn't have a larger career. She's got this definite charisma that draws your eye, and even though she has a very small part, the scenes she's in she just dominates.

(Update: After hearing the commentary, it turns out Simone Simon didn't have a larger career because she was a nasty, complaining lil' nit....)

3) I love how the script by DeWitt Bodeen (with uncredited assists from producer Val Lewton) seeds the story with a number of fairy-tale analogs that help emphasizes that this story is a fantasy about story telling. Mrs. Farrin's house, in particular, is unapologetically the movie's witch's house...although the script flips the story elements so that it's Elizabeth Russell's Barbara and not old Mrs. Farrin who's the witch....

She may live in a witch house, but this is not the witch...

4) God, do I love Nicholas Musuraca's cinematography. It totally plays to Lewton's sensibilities, and many of the visual compositions--like the sequences where we see how Ann Carter's Amy segues from the real world to the fantasy one occupied by Irena--are breathtaking.

5) Okay, let's get the biggest weakness out of the way...I recognize that Ann Carter's performance as Amy is in keeping with the standard of child actors of the day, and that this breathy, recitation-style of emoting was acceptable back then. But, to be fair, it does not age well, and in the modern age her performance can grate, as can....

6) ...for different reasons, Sir Lancelot as Edward, the Reed's butler/cook. Edward, quite frankly, is ever-present, talks in a pronounced accent and seems to be, well, not very competent in his job. I'd almost assume that Edward is a comic relief character except that he's treated totally seriously--even with respect by the Reeds. It's a weird performance, weirdly written that might have made sense at the time but now makes no sense.

7) It's to the credit of Lewton as a producer that he uses major footage shot from two separate directors....yet the film itself looks seamless, especially when you look at scenes where shots from both Gunther Von Fritsch and Robert Wise are intergrated in the same scene.

The real hero of this production may very well be Nicholas
Musuraca's cinematography....

8) Another thing I don't think they could get away with if they remade this--much like in the original, this film never commits one way or another, leaving it to the audience to decide if what they're watching is just a figment of Amy's imagination or an actual ghost story.

9) Even though this film does carry over many characters from the original, the most intriguing figure has to be Elizabeth Russell's Barbara Farrin. I won't go so far as to say that Russell, who appeared as Irena's countrywoman in the original, was beautiful--but she certainly was striking, and I like how the film may give us visual cues to make us think of Barbara as the real witch in this movie's witch house...yet seems to have a strange bit of sympathy for her, never letting us forget that her madness and extreme actions come out of living as an outcast from her mother's love.

10) I like how this film not only completes Amy's character arc--allowing her to integrate her imaginary life with her real life in a way that makes her a fully functioning person--but Oliver's--allowing him to finally accept what happened to his first wife and making unafraid to discuss her.

Overall...while prolly not what people who saw the original expected, a wonderful and unexpected little psychological fantasy that takes elements of the first story and builds on them to create something unique.

Ten Statements About....THE CAT PEOPLE (1942)

"I thought you might like to come up and see my psychiatric
etchings...."

"You can fool everybody, but Landie-Dearie Me, you can't fool a cat. They seem to know what's not right."

1) We are once again in the realm of Movies That Could Not Be Remade Today. It's everything most modern horror film aren't: subtle, restrained, logical and plotted in a way that may seem alien to modern audiences but makes total sense in the context of the film.

2) And one of the beautiful elements of this film is, much like the previously discussed Rosemary's Baby, this movie can be interpreted either way. No matter whether you accept Irena's story as the truth or a delusion, the film still works.

3) This film simply would not work without Simone Simon's performance as Irena. The script by DeWitt Bodeen does take the time to establish Irena's 'baseline' personality before her weirdness creeps into Kent Smith's Oliver's life, but it's Simon who makes her come to life and makes Irena into a charming and fun person to watch. And since we are charmed by her in the first twenty minutes, we're already invested in her when her erratic behavior begins.

4) You know something else that makes it impossible for this film to be remade right now? No one is in the wrong here. Even Jane Randolph's Alice, who professes her love for Oliver, does not try to break up his marriage and tries to be supportive of it until it's obvious that the marriage is doomed to failure. This makes her stalking all the more scary because the audience knows she's innocent.

"I become a slavering panther, and you...you got a
jackal head.  I relate, I relate..."

5) ...although the way Oliver gives up on the marriage just as Irena makes a breakthrough, and Dr. Judd decides to--what? Rape her?--in the climax both seem out of character for the film. It's the only sour notes in an otherwise great script.

6) God, I love some of the ways Jacques Tournuer shoots the set pieces here. The way he isolates Irena's face in a pool of light when she's under hypnosis, or the way he shoots the pool scene to take full advantage of the water reflections on the wall to disguise whether this is Irena, an escaped panther, or Alice's overactive imagination is just masterful. I'm not sure if this is Tournuer, cinematographer Nicholas Musurasca, or a combination of both, but whoever is responsible deserve a round of applause.

7) And speaking of Alice...not only is Jane Randolph gorgeous (the pool scene manages to be sexy and scary without a loss of subtlety), but she's a good enough actress that I thoroughly believe she would put her own happiness aside to help Oliver with his marriage.

Here's a case where if you get out of the pool...you get
out of your life as well....

8) I don't know who trained that panther, but there's that one moment where Irena steals the keys to the panther's cage and the animal looks up from its meal in a way that makes it look like it understands what's going on...and I love that moment!

9) Tom Conway's Dr. Judd is really, really cool--even when he does his abrupt heel turn, he's funny and smart and borderline manipulative all at the same time.

10) So strong is this story, so strong is the acting, that the only special effect this film seems to need is a little bit of animation and some double-exposure to represent Irena's dream of King John coming after her.

Overall...a great, subtle and wonderfully shot horror film that has the courage to rely on writing, acting and atmosphere to get its scares across.