Title: Cat People / Curse of the Cat People
Actors/Director/Anything Worth Mentioning Right Away: These are two of the nine movies made famous by Val Lewton.
Introduction: I got these movies- as a double pack- from the library for free.
Location: They mostly take place in the same small town, but they have a few different locations (including a zoo in the first and a park in the second), so they had a small budget for locations I’d say.
Plot: The first movie is about a woman who turns into a deadly cat every time she gets turned on. Really. The second is about her daughter, who is really posing as someone else’s kid, befriending the ghost of her dead momma. Really. While the plots are nice, they don’t seem to do as well on their own as they do together, as one big movie.
Acting: For the adults and children involved, it all went rather smoothly.
Production: The first is said to be such a remarkable movie because it was made for so little but grossed a lot of money. Certain aspects had to be cut- like scenes involving the actual cat- to the point where the unknown sort of became scarier than anything that could have been actually put on the screen. I like the suspense aspect of it in that manner though because it reminds me a lot of a Hitchcock film.
Sex/Nudity: No, and that’s actually one of the key points in this movie. Sure, there was a remake in 1982 that I probably won’t watch, but can you imagine this movie being made now? It would be full of movie sex scenes with the main character (Probably played by Elizabeth Banks because she’s in everything) turning into a cat with the help of CGI. That doesn’t really appeal to me.
Special Effects: This is also a case of it being left to the imagination. What Val Lewton and everyone involved in this movie has basically done is highlighted their strong points and hid the weak points. Sure, they didn’t have a lot of money. But they somehow managed to make that seem scarier.
Overall Verdict: There’s only one standout problem that I have with the second film and that is from the opening sequence. While the kids (and teacher) are playing some form of duck-duck-goose, Amy becomes “it”. Instead of participating, she wanders off and begins talking to a butterfly as if it is her friend. As she chases it, a boy comes over and declares he’ll get it for her. The boy then swoops it up in his hat, only to reveal it has been crushed in his hands. Upon seeing this, sadness sets in over Amy and she slaps the boy in the face. In the next scene, she is shown being scolded by her teacher for such actions. While I admit, one kid shouldn’t slap another kid, I don’t understand why the little boy went unpunished. Sure, Amy slapped someone, but the kid kind of deserved it because he did after all kill her friend. If someone killed an actual human friend right in front of you and your reaction was to slap the murderer, would you be punished instead of him? It seems a little backwards to me. And before you get into the whole argument of “But it was just a butterfly”, sure, but it was still a life he took—a higher crime than a slap in my opinion. (I’d rather be slapped than dead) This also could be a gateway killing. When the kid hits double digits in age, he’ll have a b.b. gun and begin shooting birds and squirrels. Before you know it, he’s got his driver’s license and is running over cats and dogs on purpose. Then, when he goes off to college, bam, he’s Ed Gein. It’s how these things typically start, trust me I watch a lot of these movies. I know this movie was on a limited budget, but would it have been too much to ask to see this boy get punished? A simple scene showing him leaving the principal’s office or waiting to go in next when Amy gets scolded would have sufficed.
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