Dozens of B-movie productions in the years to come involved a heroine fearing a unique curse that may transform her into a monster, some of them cross-breeding elements from Universal’s The Wolf Man(1941) with Cat People, and some clearly derived from Lewton’s production.
After the film’s release and unexpected box-office success, Hollywood responded with a series of films borrowing from Lewton and Bodeen’s model (to call the subsequent films “inspired by” would be a stretch). Fearing the worst and eventually unleashing her inner feline in a were-cat metamorphosis, Irena resolves to kill herself rather than embrace her animal side. Her husband, Oliver (Kent Smith), remains denied in the bedroom, and so he seeks consolation with his friend and coworker Alice (Jane Randolph).
Along with his writer from Cat People, DeWitt Bodeen, Lewton avoided another tale of human-animal transformations despite the title, his film bows an early sample of today’s popular coming-of-age fantasy film, where the setting is the mind of a child, and the impossible comes to life through imagination.Ĭat Peoplefollowed Irena (Simone Simon), an émigré from Eastern Europe who is plagued by sexual anxiety because, according to her people’s mythology, she will transform into a feline monster if she embraces her desires. It should come as no surprise that producer Val Lewton, an uncommon mind in the field of horror, should approach his only sequel in unconventional ways.
Even rarer still is something like The Curse of the Cat People, an unusual and poetic picture that seems to exist in an alternatively dreamlike world. Rare examples build on the mythology of their predecessor, using the source as a springboard to advance the characters and narrative of the original material. Following Cat People, RKO’s 1942 horror masterwork of shadow and atmosphere that also helped delay the studio’s financial ruin, the sequel resolves to occupy another genre entirely. Most sequels, both then and today, duplicate what came before-the same characters dealing with similar situations, sometimes learning new lessons, but usually just being reminded of an identical message or warning all over again. The Curse of the Cat People remains among the strangest Hollywood sequels ever made.