Rewatching "The Cat People"

I've decided to start rewatching ancient movies that once captivated me, but that I've not watched in two decades or more (which mainly eliminates many of the well-known ones out on DVD.) Started last year with "The Masque of the Red Death" a long-time favorite from the 60's (my mother was a great lover of sci-fi and horror movies, both of them available in abundance at drive-in theaters where she regularly took her horde for entertainment.)

Yesterday it was the turn of "The Cat People" which I'd bought on video in the 80's but never really watched (had seen it years ago on the usual 0100 a.m. showing to which we were subjected in the 60's in the name of late night programming.) I had thought it was a little tame compared to many of the slash and gore movies out now, but there is something eerily sweet and sad about it. The girl is both the danger and the one standing in front of it -- trying to ward it off.

The plot, for you unfortunates: A young, foreign-born girl, working as a sketch-artist meets a ship engineer accidentally at the zoo where is she is fascinated by a black panther. They hit it off and he invites her to tea 'sometime,' she invites him to tea 'now.' They sit in her dark apartment and listen to the wild cats scream in the twilight. She tells him of her ancient village in Serbia where the people, during the dark ages, had turned to devil worship and the women had the power to turn into cats, when their passions overwhelmed them.

Of course you can see the whole thing coming. He courts her and they end up, reluctantly on her part because she feels her fate approaching her, wed. She refuses to kiss him or even bed him. He is tolerant and loving, but it palls after a while and he mentions it to a gal pal at work. His wife becomes jealous of their easy-going relationship and frightening things begin to happen. Cat-like screams are heard in the shadows, the female friend's robe is torn to ribbons as she swims in a basement pool, the wife disappears at odd moments. The husband tries to get her psychiatric help, but the psychiatrist, at first skeptical, is also very attracted to the danger of the wife and, finally, attempts to seduce her, to prove to her that her superstitions are wrong. You finish it.

The story is simple, but the lighting, the stark black and white imagery, the simplicity of the tale, and the way the legend itself parallels so much of what we feel about the female sexual drive. Sometimes "simple" lets your own imagination fill in the blanks. And, for it's time, it was a very straightforward tale about sex. Not so much a horror movie as an exploration of sexual danger and the unleashing of powerful female libidoes.