Horror
Movie Index
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Cat People (1982), directed by Paul Schrader.
Nastassja Kinski, John Heard, Malcolm McDowell, Annette O'Toole, Ed Begley
Jr., Ruby Dee.
Synopsis: Irena Gallier travels to New Orleans
to live with her brother, Paul. Paul takes more than a brotherly interest
in his sister, and Irena soon learns that they are both allegedly descended
from a race of "cat people," who may only mate with their own
kind. If they mate with others, they must transform into black leopards
and kill to regain their humanity. Paul has embraced this way of life,
and satisfies his urges on prostitutes. Irena recoils from this idea,
though the idea of the cat people prevents her from consummating her newfound
romance with zoo-keeper Oliver Yates. Oliver's zoo has recently come into
possession of a panther that mauled a woman in the city's red light district.
Meanwhile, Paul has vanished. After the panther fatally injure one of
his employees, Paul returns and the panther vanishes. Irena is horrified
at the prospect that she shares this same curse, and she rejects Paul's
advances in favor of a solution of her own. Logic: The movie might have been better off had it ditched the horror genre to explore its themes. It certainly would have been better off if it had ditched the original movie and stepped out on its own. But it doesn't, and because it doesn't, because it restages three key scenes from the original film, it blows great gaping holes in its own internal logic. The three scenes it restages are the stalking in the park, the stalking in the swimming pool, and the "moya sestra" scene. Consider: according the film's mythology, the cat people only transform after sexual intercourse and only transform back after they kill. Also according to the film's plot, Irina and her brother Paul are the last of their kind, so if they want to mate without violence, they must engage in incest. So...in the swimming pool scene, if Irena was stalking Alice, who did she lay to transform and who did she kill to transform back? And in the diner scene where the woman says to Irina "moya sestra," or "my sister," this suggests that there are MORE cat people out there and Paul's problems with incest are solved. More than that, though, restaging these scenes reminds the viewer of the original film, which is an untenable comparison that the remake cannot bear. Still and all, the movie looks great, both in its evocation of the cat people myth--all blowing orange sand and black panthers lazing on trees--and in its depiction of New Orleans. The score by Georgio Moroder is memorable, with David Bowie humming on the soundtrack at key points. Even allowing that the special effects sequences are out of place, they are terrific effects. And the actors are uniformly fine. Nastassja Kinski at this point in her career was an almost perfect actress for erotica; the famous photograph of a naked Nastassja and a snake were taken on the set of this film (Kinski herself was appalled at the horror movie elements that had taken a story she described as "beautiful and moving" and turned it into something violent and ugly). The ending of the film remains more melancholy than the genre usually allows. The film is unusual--especially for Paul Schrader, but also for the horror genre--in so far as it is concerned mainly with women and their sexual oppression. If this film is a failure--and it probably is--then it is an interesting failure. It's a more interesting film than many of the horror genre's "successes" from the same era.
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