Cat People (1942)

 "I like the dark It's friendly."

I can't quite put my finger on why, but this film- as with many directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton- doesn't quite do it for me. It doesn't seem to cohere.

It gets a lot of things right. It manages to be pacey as well as having very strong characterisation for a horror film- fantasy elements and dodgy Serbian history aside, this is a film that could be about real people, and has an actual subtext of the wildness of female sexuality, kept repressed in what they would not, in 1942, have referred to as our patriarchal world.

The horror is well done, with suggestion and direction rather than spectacle as something seems to follow Alice- the footsteps and bus scene, and the swimming pool scene, are both very well done. Kent Smith is a little bland, but the rest of the case is superb.

And yet, there's an unevenness of tone. It doesn't become a horror film until the last part of the film, instead the story of a woman's fear of the harm she can do with her sexuality, causing her to remain repressed until she meets the nice but dull Oliver. There's a bit of a vague love triangle with Alice, who comes across as very real. Then there's the Doc, who probably isnt intended to come across quite as creepy as he seems in 2020. And the threat is, perhaps, undersold and left overly vague.

Nevertheless, this is a good and interesting little film.