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.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

"There's no beauty here- only death and decay."

This short film is an instructive reminder that, before 1968 and George A. Romero, zombies were a voodoo, Caribbean thing and not somerging that would ever be done without a Caribbean connection- and yes, this being 1943, there is indeed casual racism all over the place. But what's really surprising is that this isn't an action-filled horror film as such but a small-scale character drama. The zombie in question is just a catatonic woman who may have briefly died; she isn't after you, she doesn't want your brain, and it's even ambiguous whether anything supernatural happened at all. The character of Carrefour is scary to look at, but I wouldn't call this a horror film.

Still, once you accept that this is a simple drama about a burgeoning connection between a nice girl and a man from nasty slave-owning stock who struggles with his sadistic urges. There's even a nice twist at the end. Just be aware of the sort of film this is and be prepared for the cadual