Fantasy Zone: The one with were-panthers

 

Title: Cat People

What Year?: 1982

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: For Crying Out Loud!!! (1/4)

 

With this review, I’m getting into the final stretch of my newest feature, which I haven’t quite decided whether to continue. In the process, I got some material done that I decided I would prefer to wait to post. The double-back brought me to a movie I had wanted to do all along. It’s another example of a movie usually placed in other genres that I consider fantasy, though it’s even further from heroic fantasy than The Gate was. As you might expect, it’s a very unusual film, and you won’t need to check the rating to guess that this is not the same as being good. I present Cat People, a movie so egregiously 1980s it has a David Bowie theme song.

Our story begins with a shot of a desert landscape where a young woman is tied to a gnarly tree as an offering to a black panther. Jump forward, and we meet a lady named Irena invited to New Orleans by her brother Paul. She meets a zookeeper named Oliver and his ambiguous lady friend Alice. Meanwhile, her brother abruptly disappears about the same time the zoo acquires a black panther that mysteriously turns up in a house of ill repute (which incidentally isn’t what zoos do at all). The authorities take a closer look, and conclude that Paul is a serial killer who has been feeding victims to the panther. Before the animal can be destroyed, the cat escapes and Paul reappears to lay it all on the line: They are both cursed to become panthers if they make love with anyone but a member of their own family, and kill to become human again. When Paul is inevitably taken out, Irena must face her choice: Forsake her love for Oliver- or become a man-eating monster!

Cat People was a 1982 horror/ dark fantasy film from Universal, based on the 1942 film of the same name by Val Lewton (see I Walked With A Zombie). The film was directed by Paul Schrader, previously best known as the screenwriter of Taxi Driver, from a script cowritten with cult filmmaker Alan Ormsby (see Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things). The film starred Natassja Kinski as Irena and John Heard as Oliver, with Malcolm McDowell as Paul and Annette O’Toole (see… Superman 3?) as Alice. A score was composed by Giorgio Moroder, including a theme song performed by David Bowie. The movie was a moderate success, earning $21 million against a budget of $12.5M. Contemporary reviews were generally positive; the same commentators described it as either erotic horror or fantasy. Kinski reportedly criticized the film as “manipulative”. Bowie recorded a new version of the theme song for the 1983 album Let’s Dance. The song was featured in the 2017 film Atomic Blonde.

For my experiences, I heard of this film well after I knew of the original, but definitely saw it first. With the benefit of hindsight, the 1942 film is interesting for its atmospheric style and its charmingly mild innuendo. (The 1944 sequel is far more impressive, among other things giving a possible early take on autism.) By comparison, the remake is self-consciously hip right off the drawing board, and it delivers the goods after a fashion. I will freely admit it has fascinated me, enough to inspire one of my more misbegotten fan fiction efforts (also how I first came up with a homothere in an RV). The lingering interest was enough for me to buy it quite a while ago, and then never watch it until I did this review. Time was not kind to it, to say the least, yet it’s still easy to underestimate how odd and wonky it is.

Moving into the movie itself, the central paradox of this movie is that it “feels” far more strange than it looks. While the camerawork is certainly moody, there’s very little of the atmosphere of 1930s-40s horror and “noir”. There’s even less of the choppy, jarring imagery that passed for surrealism in the 1970s and 1980s. The real tone of the visuals is a strange hyperrealism (see also, dear Logos, Shanks) that truly bears out a dark/ urban fantasy designation. This shows particularly in the many shots of the grim and gloomy zoo, all Victorian-era bricks and ironwork that would be Gothic with the capital G if it was in mist and shadows instead of all-too-clear lighting and camerawork. Curiously, there’s no pronounced shift as the film moves to the swamps and woods, which are no less “dark” though symbolically free of the literal cages of civilization. The real contrast comes with the “dream” sequences. Even here, the camerawork is clear and linear, while the barren desert landscape is mockingly vivid. It’s hard to avoid taking it all as a variation on the “noble savage” myth/ archetype, which is simply muddled here.

And that brings us to the common denominator of all the movie’s flaws: There is simply no point that offers more than fleeting moments of humor or fun. It may seem counterintuitive that this would be desirable, and you would be right up to a point. The concept of the story is either pure allegory or just plain stupid; on paper, you can't not play it straight. In practice, however, all this approach does is sink the tale further into self-important angst. It’s difficult to avoid drawing a connection to the ambivalent characterization and performances of the leads, who come across increasingly as self-indulgent and naïve rather than tragic or even likeable. Kinski in particular seems either very uncomfortable or just phoning it in. By striking contrast, McDowell and especially O’Toole are the ones who actually seem to be having fun here, which is exactly where the possibilities of a genuine dark comedy open up. On consideration, this would have been the right tone to give the premise proper cross-examination and development. Do we really know that the transformation won’t wear off? Are there acts that would satisfy both partners without triggering the transformation? And, to state the most prurient implication outright, what really happens if one of the shapeshifters pairs with a human or animal partner in beast mode? It’s absurd and gross, yet it’s the kind of honesty that might have worked.

That leaves me with the “one scene”, and I’m going with the one that makes absolutely no sense even by this movie’s standards. As we hit the final act, Paul breaks into a room in Oliver’s house where Irena is staying, a strange and surreal sequence in itself. It’s what follows, however, that turns the dial to Bonkers. Irena has fled, leaving Paul to begin his transformation for no obvious reason. The effects by Tom Burman are truly grueling to watch, at least as good as An American Werewolf In London. Just one detail among many are the claws, which sprout straight from his knuckles. He’s still barely human when Oliver bursts in, enough to cry his name as if rage alone has been enough to drive the metamorphosis (one more intriguing interpretation that gets no help from the movie). We get the one real “noir” moment as Paul faces the were-beast alone in the dark, while Alice belatedly runs for a shotgun. Inevitably, the beast pounces just as Alice breaks in, and what happens isn’t that clear. It all builds up to Irena as she circles back to the ground below the window… and screams.

In closing, I am back to justifying my rating. On paper, this is the kind of movie that isn’t “that” bad on paper or even on first viewing. I will freely agree, there is plenty to like, and as usual, it bears repeating that the true worst of the worst were never meant to be covered on the rating scale I am using here. As time goes by, however, this is exactly the kind of movie where even its good points start to feel deceptive and treacherous. To me, the final verdict is that it is a movie that tried to be “adult” without understanding what makes a truly mature genre film. The predictable result was a film that just seems awkward and silly with hindsight. It remains worth watching, but as a cautionary example more than anything else. With that, I for one am done with it, at least for a while longer.

Image credit Todo El Terror Del Mundo.