Cat People

Innocent, virginal orphan Irena (Nastassia Kinski) arrives in New Orleans to visit her demented brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell). The two siblings share a dark secret: they, like their ancestors for several generations, turn into wild cats when aroused, and can only revert to their human shapes by killing. Paul has embraced this lifestyle, but Irena has so far managed to avoid succumbing to the curse. Paul has a practical solution to the situation: keep the love in the family (to avoid turning into cats, the Cat People must only mate with their own kind) - but the entry into the picture of Oliver (John Heard), a zookeeper, who has the hots for Irena, threatens to destroy this uneasy peace.

Paul Schrader's Cat People is a delightfully camp and pleasingly mind-boggling affair that has less to do with Jacques Tourneur's 1942 offering than the title would suggest. Indeed, Schrader has remarked, on more than one occasion, that he wishes he had given his 1982 effort a completely different title, as then people would have been more likely to evaluate it based on its own merits rather than constantly comparing it to the "original". Beyond sharing the same essential premise - Irena suffers from an ancient curse that causes her to transform into a leopard when aroused (the fact that the arousal is sexual in nature is made significantly more blatant in the "remake") - the two are as different as can be, and as such, the bulk of my review is not concerned with pitting the two films against each other.


Like Irena, the film seems to be suffering from something of a crisis of identity. On the one hand, it wants to be a darkly erotic study of sexual desire, while at the same time certain scenes would feel more at home in your average run of the mill slasher. That's not to say that I have a problem with the explicit gore, but that it seems misplaced. The death of the prostitute at the hands of Paul in cat form, for instance, is tackily handled and operates from the point of view that the best way to handle the scene is to show as much gore as possible and have the actress' breasts conveniently pop out during the climax. I would have less of a problem with scenes like these if they at least demonstrated something in the way of a build up of tension, but sadly this is almost completely eschewed in favour of shock tactics. This brings the tone of the whole film down - Schrader is capable of much better than this.

It is interesting that the film's overarching theme, that of a dual identity, is mirrored in the way in which it approaches its subject matter. Many people have referred to it as an uncomfortable marriage between American horror and European art-house aesthetic, and I'm tempted to agree. For all its brash gore sequences, there is something otherworldly about the atmosphere, with the cinematography reminding me a great deal of Dario Argento's Inferno. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the film's designer was an Italian, Ferdinando Scarfiotti, originally brought over to the US by Schrader to work on his previous film, American Gigolo. With its screaming synthesizers, abundance of matte paintings and fluorescent-tinted hallucinogenic dream sequences, Cat People is decidedly a product of the 1980s, and it is this datedness, along with its unusual combination of American and European stylisation, that makes it so unpredictable and, at its best, genuinely unnerving. This is most true of the key sequence that takes place around half-way through the film, which sees Irena prowling through the woodlands in the middle of the night, becoming increasingly more feline. The colours are manipulated, the camera angles become increasingly skewed, and the generally otherworldly tone of this set-piece is a sheer triumph.


The cornerstone of the piece, arguably, is Nastassia Kinski's performance as Irena. Schrader states, in his audio commentary, that he chose her for her unique appearance ("European rather than American," he says, and I can't think of a better way of explaining it), and while this undoubtedly plays a great part in her effectiveness in the role, it is her performance that sells it. She is extremely cat-like in her mannerisms, meaning that we believe that the beast is inside her despite the fact that we don't see her transform until near the end of the film. There is an enjoyable level of theatricality to Malcolm McDowell's embodiment of Paul, and you get the impression that he's having a great time sinking his teeth into this larger than life role. He complements Kinski nicely, and their scenes together are alive with tension. John Heard, on the other hand, is not particularly effective as Irena's love interest. He is by no means terrible, but he doesn't have sufficient charisma and tends to end up disappearing into the shadows.

Cat People is far from a bad film, but it is certainly not an entirely satisfying one. The subject matter is dangerously theatrical already, and the handling of certain moments threatens to take it into the realms of farce. The only thing you can do, in this kind of situation, it to ride with it and accept its eccentricities at face value. As such, it is an interesting excercise in style with some wonderfully evocative imagery, but as a fully-rounded movie it fails to be a complete success.


DVD Presentation

Cat People is presented anamorphically in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The transfer is a bit of a mixed bag, not least because it tends to lack fine detail. The colours also come across as muted at times, although because the principal colour on display is a dark shade of orange-red, it's difficult to tell to what extent this was intentional. The biggest problem is that the transfer drops in and out of interlaced mode on a number of occasions, the most significant offenders being the opening sequence and Irena's noctural wander in the middle of the film.

The audio is surround-encoded stereo, which as far as I can tell is pretty much in keeping with the original theatrical exhibitions. It's far from a stand-out track, but there are no major problems with it. The dialogue is, for the most part, pretty clear, although unsurprisingly it lacks the crispness of more recent productions. Subtitles are provided in English, Spanish and French for the film but not for the extras.


Extras

Although not labelled as a special edition, Universal have come up with an impressive set of bonus materials for this release of Cat People. The first thing on offer is An intimate portrait by Paul Schrader, where the good man talks to us for a little over 25 minutes about the film, covering a wide range of subjects in a decidedly enthusiastic manner, despite being ill with a fever at the time. This serves as a great introduction to the film and is something that I would advise you to watch before heading on to...

... a feature-length audio commentary. Again featuring Schrader, this track builds on what was begun with the previous featurette as the film's director, covering some of the same ground but going into substantially more detail. He covers everything here, from his reasons for making the film, to its symbolism, to the various visual effects processes used. While his seeming lack of regard for the well-being of the various cats used in the making of the film ("They're literally frying to death up there, but I really wanted to get this shot," he tells us at one point - never mind the fact that one animal died as the result of a head injury) may leave you wondering what the crew and the various animal handlers could have been thinking, Schrader comes across well, taking on board the film's faults while attempting to justify some of his more controversial decisions.

On the set with director Paul Schrader is a 10-minute video piece shot during the making of the film, in which a primly-spoken off-screen interviewer probes a decidedly uncomfortable-looking Schrader. This featurette is reasonably interesting, but he doesn't reveal anything here that is not articulated better in the new bonus materials created specifically for the DVD.

Special makeup effects by Tom Burman follows. This 11-minute featurette is comprised of an interview with Burman, combined with footage from the film and photographs and drawings of the various effects. Most interesting is material focusing on the effects that were intended for Irena's transformation but were never used.

Matte paintings is a 3-minute reel of footage showing material before and after the various background paintings were added. These days, matte paintings seem to be something of a lost art, so it is interesting to see just how many shots were augmented in this manner, some less obviously than others.

For just under 4 minutes, filmmaker Robert Wise, interviewed by Laurent Bouzereau, discusses Val Lewton, producer of the 1942 version of Cat People. Unfortunately, this featurette is too short to go into much detail, and feels a little out of place given how tenuous the connection is between the two different versions of the film.

A 7-minute slideshow of production photographs, the moody theatrical trailer, nine pages of production notes and "recommendations" for other transformation-related horror films from Universal (basically just stills of the covers for An American Werewolf in London, Blood Simple and The Frighteners) complete the package.


Overall

Interesting but flawed, Paul Schrader's version of Cat People isn't really sure what it wants to be, and as a result is not as satisfying as it could have been. Universal have put together a nice package for this release, and although the transfer is not particularly hot, the extras are well-produced and informative.