Cat People

Cat People by Paul Schrader is a remake of the 1942 film Cat People by Val Lewton, directed by Jacques Tourneur, who directed Curse of the Demon with Dana Andrews, which ws based on the story "Casting the Runes" by M.R. James. Already we're buried fur-deep in trivia. The modern movie stars the very sexy and svelte Nastassia Kinski who is the daughter of legendary, iconic Euro-sleaze horror actor Klaus Kinski, who played Jack the Ripper and Nosferatu, and who reputedly was just one card short of actually being a full-blown narcissistic psychopath. At any rate, even his beautiful, beautiful daughter derided him, and said later, after his death, that it didn't exactly fill her with any sadness that he had shuffled off this mortal coil.

And apparently most everyone who knew him or worked with him felt similarly.

Cat People features appearances by Ed Begley Jr. (who does not bloodily fare well in this pic) and John Larroquette, who also did horror turns in the era in films such as Altered States and had earlier provided the opening narration for the original drive-in exploitation chainsaw shocker The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974 or thereabouts. Of course, Larroquette later ended up opposite fellow bad movie veteran the late, lamented Richard Moll on the classic Eighties TV sitcom "Night Court," with Markie Post and Harry Anderson. Cue, "Those Were the Days."

Cat People ALSO stars none other than the ruggedly handsome, boyishly charming, and thoroughly British iconic actor Malcolm McDowell, who is the face of Thy Little Alex forever and forever, my Droogan brothers, in Stanley Kubrick's cinematic milestone of futuristic savagery, A Clockwork Orange (1970). Also, in one of my three favorite films as a time-traveling H.G. Wells chasing Jack the Ripper with Mary Steenburgen in 1979 San Francisco, in Time After Time, directed by Nicholas Myers, who also directed him in Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country. Had enough yet?

McDowell brings his sister Irena (Kinski) to New Orleans to live with him in a house with an old black woman mambo named Frumalle. They each share the secret of their occult origins: their tainted bloodline, going back to a blood-red African velt wherein long, sleek, black panthers roamed, is the curse of the souls of the dead the primitives offered up to these great cats. In short, Kinski and McDowell can only incestuously mate with eachother--or risk turning into their feline forms and devouring their mate. McDowell has become a serial killer, and the evidence is in the dark, subterranean basement of cages and bones below his New Orleans manse (for some reason bringing to mind, for this author at least, New Orleans slave torturer and killer Madame Blancque ("Madame White"); or better known to history as Delphine LaLaurie, who kept her victims in an attic).

McDowell ("Paul Gallier") is captured in feline form. Enter the zookeepers or game wardens or whatever, animal control, one played by John Heard and another by Anette O'Toole, who attempt to track Paul down after he escapes from his cage. The rest of the film focuses on the gradual revelation as to where the curse originates and includes some dream-like touches. Also, a lot of naked flesh and a lot of blood.

But for the beautiful body of Nastassia Kinski, the film might be overlong by half. Otherwise, she goes streaking around half-naked, turned into a cat at last and trussed up to a bed in a crude bondage pose thing that is rather, shall we say, visually captivating. The dark romance of forbidden lust and tainted blood comes, in a recursive loop, full circle.

At the end, we have a conclusion that will leave the common viewer a little tired, yet, not without a sense of intrigue.

Unless of course, he's a total pussy.

No pun.

Cat People (1982) - Official Trailer

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