The loneliness of a killer cat woman. Subtle scares and suspense mark this horror story of a sweet Serbian girl (French cutie Simone Simon) who falls in love with a straight-laced American guy (Kent Smith), but is haunted by an old legend that women from her village turn into evil, carnivorous, literal panthers if a man touches them. Under the artful direction of film noir master Jacques Tourneur, the pace here feels unhurried and deliberate (but not dull), yet it all breezes by in a cool seventy-three minutes.
This is the first of producer Val Lewton’s celebrated series of low-budget “psychological horror” films for RKO Pictures. Lewton himself came up with the basic story for this one, combining his own two phobias of cats and of physical contact with other people. Cat People turned out to be RKO’s most profitable film of the year, which helped save the ailing studio and it earned Lewton the freedom to make more of his own brand of horror movies.
It’s great, strange sequel, The Curse of the Cat People, would come out two years later.