Movie #923: Cat People

Cat People is a 1982 erotic thriller and remake of a 1942 thriller that was, shall we say, much less explicit. It stars Malcom McDowell, Nastassja Kinski, John Heard, Annette O'Toole, Frankie Faison, Ed Begley Jr., and Ruby Dee.

Irena Gallier (Kinski) arrives in New Orleans to meet her long-lost brother Paul (McDowell). The night she arrives, a black leopard attacks and mauls a sex worker, and the big cat gets captured the next morning by Action Zookeeper Oliver (Heard) and his doomed assistant, Joe (Begley Jr). They take the cat to the zoo, while Irena searches for Paul, who didn't come home last night. 

You may, from the title, have guessed where this is heading.

The panther kills Joe (told ya) and then vanishes. Oliver starts dating Irena, but Irena's desires get weirder and weirder. Eventually the truth comes out: Paul was the panther (duh). He and Irena are both werecats. When they have sex, they change into panthers. When they kill, they change back (although later in the movie Paul seems to change of his own accord, so maybe it's something they can learned to control). 

Paul is killed attempting to kill Oliver while in panther-form, and Irena finally has sex (with Oliver), changes into a panther, kills Oliver's friend Yeatman (Emery Hollier), changes back, then begs Oliver to change her into a panther so she can be "with her own kind." That apparently means "live in a zoo," because that's where she ends up.

So, I've never seen the original, but obviously this one is much more explicit in terms of both sex and violence. The director had a stated mandate of changing up the expectations - when they expect sex, give 'em violence, and vice versa. And honestly with that in mind, the movie makes a little more sense, but it's still very weird. 

Conceptually I think it's pretty interesting. Malcolm McDowell and Nastassja Kinski both adopt very feline body language in their performances, which sometimes works and is sometimes hilarious. John Heard is...an interesting choice for a romantic lead, and I think the more interesting character is Annette O'Toole's Alice (Oliver's love-smitten coworker). Ruby Dee likewise doesn't have a great deal to do as Malcolm's apparently in-the-know housemaid Female (no, really, they went with that "feh-MAL-ay" thing), and the movie kind of skirts some potentially uncomfortable race issues. Like, for example, if the werecats are descendants of people who used to sacrifice their children to leopards, why are they white? 

Cat People is one of those interesting relics of its time, a studio film with an impressive budget (they built the zoo as a three-story set with an interior and an exterior; nowadays it'd all be computer generated), and I like it because it's weird and about were-creatures. But the pacing is off, it feels too long, and it stumbles a bit in the third act as it tries to figure out where it wants to go. I'd actually love to see a contemporary remake with Naomi Harris or something as Irena.

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: Medium

Next up: Cloak & Dagger