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| Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People | 
| Directors: Gunther Von Fritsch, Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise
Actors: Simone Simon, Tom Conway, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Jack Holt
Studio: Turner Home Ent
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $8.89
You Save: $11.09 (56%)
Buy New/Used from $8.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  (24 reviews)
Sales Rank: 30097
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: Czech (Original Language), English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD
Running Time: 143 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
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
Release Date: October 4, 2005
Theatrical Release Date: December 25, 1942
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The studio gave Val Lewton small budgets and lurid pre-tested film titles. Lewton working with rising filmmakers and emphasizing fear of the unseen turned meager resources into momentous works of psychological terror. Directed by Jacques Tourneur Cat People is the trailblazing first of Lewton's nine horror classics. Simone Simon portrays a bride who fears an ancient hex will turn her into a deadly panther when she's in passion's grip. Simon returns in The Curse of the Cat People a sequel in title and a landmark study of a troubled child in fact. Robert Wise makes his directing debut co-helming a gothic-laced mix of fantasy and fright so astute it was used in college psychology classes.Running Time: 143 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:HORROR UPC:053939724424
Amazon.com
Val Lewton's name is synonymous with the subtlest, most mysterious brand of horror filmmaking in Hollywood's golden age, and the nine horror classics he produced at RKO between 1942 and 1946 constitute the most remarkable cycle of creativity in B-movie history. He and director Jacques Tourneur scored with both a popular hit and a masterpiece in 1942: Cat People. The story involves a pretty young Serbian woman in Manhattan (Simone Simon) convinced that her ancestors had practiced animal worship during the Middle Ages--and that she herself might shape-change into a lithe, ravening panther if her passions were aroused. The film is uncannily successful in keeping the viewer guessing whether this is a phobia borne of morbid obsession and sexual repression, or a genuine, horrific possibility. There are two sequences of matchless artistry and almost unbearable suspense--a lonely, echoing walk through pools of lamplight alongside Central Park, and a late-night swim in a deserted indoor pool--that build to throat-grabbing climaxes and remain milestones in the history of screen horror. The Curse of the Cat People (1944), a sequel that is not quite a sequel, is a pretend-horror movie that's really a contemplation of the fragility of childhood. --Richard Jameson
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
One of My Favorite Holiday Movies November 16, 2008
Yes, "Curse of the Cat People" is a sequel to Jacques Tourneur's Cat People (1942) . . . sort of. But this follow-up is really the story of an odd little girl with a rich inner life. Through her eyes, we get a glimpse of what it's like to be a child, to live in a world where the lines between fantasy and fact are wonderfully blurred. And if you're going to believe in the spirit of Christmas, you have to look beyond the cold, hard light of the day-to-day.
Robert Wise's first directorial attempt makes something wonderful out of a story close to producer Val Lewton's heart. Simone Simon returns as the ghost of Irena (the Cat Woman from the first movie) and the wonderful child actress, Ann Carter, plays Amy, our haunted heroine. Oh yes, the story builds toward a climax on Christmas Eve and we hit our crisis on Twelfth Night so it fits right into the holiday spirit.
This DVD offers both "Curse" and its older sibling, the genre-defining, psychological horror wonder, Jacques Tourneur's "Cat People," in really good prints. Both features offer excellent commentary tracks by film historian, Greg Mank, too (complete with some phone-interview comments from Simone Simon).
Horror and Beauty, Lewton & Torneur November 13, 2008
This odd, accomplished, and beautiful film technically belongs to the "horror" genre, but while disturbing and sad, and with some tense moments, it is not so much frightening as rather like a film noir-folk-morality tale. Legendary filmmakers Val Lewton and Jacques Torneur (who did "Curse of the Demon", another cult classic that is more in the "horror" style than this film) collaborated on this atmospheric little gem.
Set in Manhattan in the 1940s, the story follows the fate of a recent emigre to America from Serbia, the beautiful Irena Dubrova (French actress Simone Simon). Irena is drawn to the black panther in the Central Park Zoo, visiting his cage often to sketch him. It is there that Oliver Reed (Kent Smith) spots her and, immediately smitten with her exotic magnetism, approaches and begins to pursue her. Irena's wistful vulnerability, combined with a graceful physical evasiveness, completes Oliver's conquest, and he soon asks her to marry him.
But as soon as they are wed, Oliver discovers that Irena's evasiveness is not just maiden modesty - the descendant of a group of Satanic Carpathian mystics who worshipped the cat, and escaped the wrath of the Christian King John by hiding in the mountains, Irena is convinced that she is possessed of a dual nature, part human and part panther, and that any erotic contact with a human male will arouse the panther that sleeps within her, and she will metamorphose into one and kill him. Irena longs for a normal marriage, but cannot conquer her fear that a full sexual relationship will lead to annihilation of her partner.
Needless to say, Oliver gives her fears no credence and assumes that Irena has a sexual complex. He is willing to be patient for awhile, but insists that she see a pyschiatrist to deal with her "fantasies". Tom Conway plays Dr. Judd, the psychiatrist who begins to treat Irena, but he makes little headway, as he 1) is strongly attracted to Irena himself, and 2) refuses to acknowledge the extent and strength of Irena's terror of her own nature.
Complicating matters is Oliver's colleague at his office, Alice (Jane Randolph). Alice, pretty but not in the charismatic way Irena is with her soft, accented voice and almond-shaped eyes, is meant to serve as the whole, uncomplicated American counterweight to the divided, tortured, but beautiful Other. Alice is in love with Oliver herself, but gamely hides her disappointment over his infatuation with and eventual marriage to Irena.
But as the marriage deteriorates over Irena's ongoing refusal of consummation, Alice's emotional support becomes more and more important to Oliver, arousing Irena's anger. Irena's suspicions call up subtle, but ever more catlike changes in her behavior, and a rising sense of foreboding in the atmosphere. Oliver, at last, realizes that Alice is the more suitable partner, and that he must part with Irena, which precipitates the film's most riveting sequences and its tragic climax in the Central Park Zoo.
The film concludes with lines from one of John Donne's "Holy Sonnets":
"But black sin hath betray'd to endless night
My worlds, both parts, and, O, both parts must die."
This is NOT your ordinary horror flick. It is, besides, intensely atmospheric, well-performed, and genuinely touching.
CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE takes place four years after Irina's death. While it references some of the psycho-sexual, magical themes from the original film, it is more focused on the potent imaginary world of lonely children. It is interesting and nicely made, but it lacks the "gestalt" of the original, and doesn't exert quite the same magical fascination.
Both are recommended, at least for contrast, but it is the original film, CAT PEOPLE, that carries off the laurels here as the truly memorable effort.
Ordeal of the Cat People November 9, 2008
Fete of Death
The cat woman is doomed--and, what's more, she knows it--on account of her affliction in this film noir classic. Becuase she knows she's doomed, she becomes sexually repressed. If for no other reasons, disregarding its sexual suppression aspects, "Cat People" is a brilliant, scary, though understated, film because of two outstanding creepy scenes.
The first occurs when the cat woman stalks another woman down a deserted, silent street in the dead of night. The only sounds we hear are the clicking of the jeopardized woman's heels echoing through the night. At first, the cat woman's heels, too, can be heard following the targeted woman, but then, ominously, as the cat woman becomes more and more catlike, the sound of her clacking heels disappears. The eerie scene ends when a bus screams to a halt next to the woman as she looks upward and sees branches shaking above her head as if an animal is climbing the tree nearby. The scene harks back to a similar scene in "The Leopard Man," another excellent film directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton.
The other masterful creepy scene in "Cat People" involves the same woman as she is again stalked by the cat woman, this time as the woman swims in an indoor swimming pool in dim light, surrounded by foreboding, looming shadows as they play fitfully over the lapping water and along the gym room's walls. Instead of the clacking heels in the aforementioned scene, we can hear only the swimming woman's forlorn paddling in the pool, echoing tinnily across the swimming-pool water around her and then off the walls into shrieking quiet. And we can feel it in our very bones that the cat woman is preparing to attack ...
--Bryan Cassiday, author of "Fete of Death"
These Cats Belong Together October 24, 2008
[This review is part of my 31 Days of Halloween series]
It's great that these two films are packaged as one, because they reveal a lot about about their producer, the legenday Val Lewton.
You hear about how actors get "typed," saddled with a certain kind of role or character for the rest of their professional lives. Boris Karloff & Bela Lugosi are good examples. But you never hear about producers getting typed. They may prefer one genre over another or one style over another--but nothing compared to the way Val Lewton was more or less forced to produce one horror film after another in a kind of formulary nightmare. Don't get me wrong, his horror films are brilliant, perhaps more than the genre deserves. Unfortunately for him, Lewton was a foreigner to the United States and did not have the $cash$ or the connections to steer his own course in the 1940's Hollywood.
CAT PEOPLE is pretty much a mainstream horror story of its day. Cute Serbian girl transplanted to New York is obsessed with studying the black panther in the City Zoo. Black Panther appears oddly stimulated by her presence. Girl meets available American & they get married. Girl tells him stories about people in her homeland who can change into big cats, like the more familiar stories of werewolves. New wife gets jealous of husband's co-worker & spooky things begin to happen.
All pretty tame, but Lewten knows how to build suspense and take advantage of every bit put on film. He also brings intelligence & compassion into what could have been a faily mediorce production. So instead it is one of the great B&W horror films of all time.
The studio wanted to capitalize on the success of CAT PEOPLE & they had to twist Lerwton's to sign on. He developed an idea that really had little to do with the plot of CAT PEOPLE. The big boys grudgingly gave in a bit, but they insisted he use the totally inappropriate THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE.
The finished product was a little masterpiece.
CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE is about a young girl who doesn't quite fit in. She has visions of a beautiful lady (Irina, the cat woman of the previous film.) There is something almost Jungian in the story that unfolds. Many times it reminded me of the original BEAUTY & THE BEAST. The girl meets an elderly woman who lives in a dark mansion. She is attended by her adult daughter (the same Irina, but in a totally different form) who is bitter & filed with resentment. The mother insists that the woman's not her daughter & wants her to leave. The story continues from there.
There is a strong European feel to this film, something that may have been a little too exotic for 1940-50's America.
It is beautiful.
 Neglected classic September 9, 2008
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 (nee 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; but 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 leftover 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 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, and 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 it's only natural that bad critics will read much more into it than is seen, as well.
Cat People is a great treatise on human loneliness, for few film characters have ever been aloner 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. The film's opening has a fictive quote from a supposed book by Dr. Judd, who apparently survived his seemingly fatal encounter with Irena (for the character- still played by Conway, shows up in the later Lewton film The Seventh Victim), and the film ends with a quote from John Donne's Holy Sonnet V. Yet, at its center is loneliness, and Simone Simon's eyes, vaguely feline as they are, are the perfect receptacles for that lack, and why the film can be watched over and again, and seen anew each time. With that fact in mind, it may have enough going for it that greatness as a pure film can be claimed, even outside of genre. I, for one, will watch it again to see if it does. So should you.
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