Jacques Tourneur's immortal 1942 original version of Cat People is a wonderful exercise in the macabre. The stark black and white B-movie is a cult classic and has a mysterious element to it that raises it above other schlock of its era. In that film, Simone Simon plays Irena, a fashion artist living in New York, who falls in love with Kent Smith. But Irena believes that she suffers from an ancient curse that whenever she is emotionally aroused, she will turn into a ferocious panther. Paul Schrader attempts a Reagan-era update of the film, adding another and rather unsavoury element to the film. It is not nearly as suspenseful and seems largely an excuse to look at a disrobed Nastassja Kinski. Also, the emotional arousal of the original is replaced with sexual arousal and what we have is an erotic gorefest that should not have been made.
Based on a story by DeWitt Bodeen, the legend he concocted has cat people originating long ago, when humans would sacrifice women to leopards, who mated with them. Sounds kinky. Cat people, so the story goes, look like humans but must mate with other cat people. In Schrader's updated and incestuous film, Paul and Irena Gallier (Malcolm McDowell and Nastassja Kinski) are brother and sister and seem to be the only cat people left. Unfortunately, Irena is in love with Oliver Yates, played by John Heard, but she knows in order to keep the species alive, she must mate with her brother. This is a ridiculous premise and while it may stay truer to the original story than the 1942 version, this is one of Schrader's weakest films. Overly stylish, the soft porn element takes precedence and Kinski, who should be playing Cold War femme fatales, is miscast in this film, which is more about incest than cat people. It is a nice film to look at – the set design and cinematography are well done and highly original – but a film must have some substance, and this director just did not get that.
Schrader was having an affair with his leading lady, which fell apart during the shooting of the film. Kinski even wanted some of her sex scenes removed, or at least toned down, but the people at Universal would not comply. Schrader claims it is one of his more personal films, but probably not because of what we see on screen. What amazes me most is that Kinski and Heard would even agree to do this movie. McDowell has always sought odd roles in disturbing movies or has at least been typecast to play bizarre characters (if…, A Clockwork Orange, O Lucky Man, Britannia Hospital), so one would expect this from him. But a movie like this is a potential career killer and one could make the case that after her star turn in Roman Polanski's Tess, Cat People and to a lesser extent the Al Pacino bomb Revolution hurt Kinski’s box office potential tremendously. Schrader may never have recovered either. After the screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and his brilliant early work which includes Blue Collar, Hardcore and American Gigolo, Cat People was a misstep and he would not direct another decent film until Affliction in 1997.
Cult film aficionados will appreciate Cat People, especially if they like Tony Scott's vampire cult film The Hunger, which also appeared in the early 1980s or if they like horror movies involving leopards, panthers or other sundry wildcats. But for the rest of us, stick to Interview With the Vampire or less disgusting cult favourites.
