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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.

Two Faces: The original version of Cat People was one of my mother's favorite movies. She showed it to me when I was twelve or thirteen, thinking--rightly--that I would enjoy it. Her taste in movies in part shaped my own, but I'm someone who grew up with horror movies of a more sanguinary bent. The remake was a favorite of mine when it was released in theaters in 1982. Mom didn't much care for it when she finally saw it on cable. I'm not terribly surprised by that. It was antithetical to the kinds of thrillers she liked. The original film shows the audience nothing. The remake shows practically everything. If I were a suspicious viewer, I would surmise that director Paul Schrader was criticizing the original film's reticence, because at its core, the remake shares the same psychological concerns as Lewton's movie. Both films are about sexual dysfunction. The original film even discusses this in the open. The remake doesn't feel the need, in part because it can show the audience things that were denied to Lewton. It shows the audience sex, it shows the audience dismemberment, it shows the audience the transformation of man and woman into panthers utilizing special effects that were state-of-the-art at the time. This last part is a blunder on the part of the filmmakers, but it's an understandable blunder. They could and did literalize a transformation that was only hinted at in the original film, but in doing so, they rob it of its symbolic power. By removing the cat people from the realm of archetype and symbol, they become spectacle, they become a geek show of the sort demanded by horror movie audiences of the time.

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.