The Cat People/The Curse of the Cat People (REGION 1) (NTSC) | 
 enlarge | Directors: Gunther Von Fritsch, Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise
Actors: Simone Simon, Tom Conway, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Jack Holt
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
Buy New: £6.91
New (13) Used (3) from £6.91
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 25153
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: Czech (Original Language), English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 143
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: DT7244D
ISBN: 0780650638
UPC: 053939724424
EAN: 9780780650633
ASIN: B000A0GOF0
Theatrical Release Date: December 25, 1942
Release Date: October 4, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Ships from U.S.A., to anywhere in the United Kingdom! Orders only take 7-10 days! We specialise in service to the U.K. and only ship airmail.
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| Customer Reviews:
Two creepy B movies with more potential than pay-off, but still fun to watch July 16, 2007
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
CAT PEOPLE:
Says psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd, author of The Anatomy of Atavism, to Irena Reed, his reluctant patient. He is describing the things they have just talked about. "...and the cat women of your village, too. You told me of them, women who in jealousy or anger or out of their own corrupt passions can change into great cats, like panthers. And if one of these women were to fall in love, and her lover was to kiss her and to take her into his embrace, she would be driven by her own evil to kill him."
For me, this overripe bit of psychiatry from the suave, moth-eaten Tom Conway as Judd is about as good as Cat People gets. The film is a Poverty Row B movie which was made on a shoestring in 1942, when theaters played two-movie bills with cartoons, short subjects, a news reel and coming attractions. Studios cranked out hundreds of B movies to fill the bottom half of those double bills.
Cat People, along with the other movies producer Val Lewton ground out, using talented (and cheap) directors and writers and using titles given to him by his studio, has gotten a lot of retrospective praise, especially for the camerawork, lighting and directing. But for me, Cat People is something of a disappointment. Without a budget to speak of and with B level actors, he and director Jacques Tourneur had to rely on implied fear, creepy situations with few payoffs and characters who, frankly, I didn't care much about.
Irena (Simone Simon), has come to America from a village in Serbia. She believes that in the throws of passion she will turn into a large and violent cat. This naturally slows things down quite a bit in her new marriage to square-jawed and infinitely patient Oliver Reed (Kent Smith). She's not helped when her husband finally has had enough and decides he's really in love with his co-worker, Alice Moore (Jane Randolph). The denouement involves a sword cane, a key to open the panther cage at the zoo and the realization by Oliver and Alice that Irena wasn't kidding.
The movie has two brief but genuinely creepy moments: When Alice is walking home late at night and senses someone, or something, is behind her, and Alice in the swimming pool of her residential apartment. She's all by herself...except she hears a guttural growl. The dark shadows, the moving light reflected from the water onto the walls, the knowledge that something is there with her is enough to put anyone off swimming for a while.
The movie was interesting, even fun to watch. It looked good for what it was, a low budget B movie. I think it's stretching things a bit, as some professional critics are doing now, to call it a kind of low-budget masterpiece. If you like B movies from the Forties, and I do a lot, watch it, enjoy and decide for yourself.
Simone Simon, in my opinion, had one of the most knowing glances of any actress I've ever seen. In this movie, unfortunately, her curse was not turning into a panther but having to wear her hair in a really unattractive fashion. To see her at her best, both in looks and in portraying self-centered sexuality, check out La Bete Humaine.
Also keep an eye out for Theresa Harris, the black actress who plays the waitress in the cafe Oliver frequents. She's unbilled, as she was in most of the movies during her long career. She makes an impression in a tiny role.
THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE:
Great potential within limited means, and then the slow leak of air from the balloon. The Curse of the Cat People pulls together Simone Simon, Kent Smith and Jane Randolph from 1942's Cat People and attempts to cash in on that movie's success. This time, however, despite great photography and some eerie situations, the pieces simply fall apart.
It's now about seven years since Irena Reed (Simone Simon) died. Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) has married Alice Moore (Jane Randolph). They live in a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood, and they have a beautiful, quiet, lonely six-year-old daughter, Amy (Ann Carter). One afternoon Amy wanders down the street and finds her way into the yard of a great old house. She hears, "Little girl, little girl," and someone behind the curtains of an upstairs window throws down to her a ring tied to a handkerchief. But just then a severe looking woman appears, takes the handkerchief from Amy and tells her to leave. Amy believes she was given a wishing ring. One afternoon, playing by herself in her backyard, she wishes for a friend. Soon, a friend appears...Irena, in a flowing gossamer white gown. She and Amy play together during the days which pass. Is Irena just a figment of a lonely little girl's need, or is she something more sinister from her father's past? And what about the two women who live in that forbidding mansion...an old woman who says her daughter died years ago and the other woman who sent Amy on her way but who insists she is the old woman's daughter. All I can say is that the movie builds some intriguing possibilities, but ends with a great dollop of sentimental goop.
Simone Simon plays a key role but has relatively little screen time, and only with Amy. It is disconcerting to see how Irena, a woman of repressed sexuality and rage in Cat People, has now become a low-budget version of Glinda, the good witch of the north. Kent Smith and Jane Randolph were both limited actors. Here Smith's Oliver Reed has become a successful, clueless clod and Randolph's Alice Reed is little more than a mannered antecedent to June Cleaver. The two women in the mansion fare much better. The old woman, Mrs. Julie Farren, is played by Julia Dean with a nice combination of ambivalent kindness mixed with a touch of angry dementia. The standout, in my view, is Elizabeth Russell as her daughter, Barbara Farren. Russell is a tall woman who has "psycho" written all over her attractive, severe features. But is she?
The Curse of the Cat People is a title that, as was often the case with a Val Lewton production, doesn't have much more than a slight relevance to the storyline. Still, the movie has some great ingredients: The possibility of horror in bright daylight in a nice neighborhood; the dread that something awful might happen to a child; the uncertainty of who is going off their hinges. But it doesn't happen. There is some tension and suspense, but to no great purpose. We just wind up knowing more than we want to about the needs of lonely children.
The DVD transfer looks very good with both movies. They share the same disc, which is part of the five-DVD Val Lewton Collection. Each movie has a commentary.
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