Note: I always try to follow Blogspot's rules when it comes to adult-oriented images but, because of the sensual nature of this film, some of the images may be pushing it a little. Just a little word of warning before we begin in earnest.
In the early days of man, there were tribes where the women were sacrificed to black leopards but, rather than killing them, the big cats essentially became their mates. After a glimpse at one of these ancient rituals, the story truly begins in modern day New Orleans, where Irena Gallier has arrived to meet up with her brother, Paul, whom she hasn't seen since early childhood. He takes her to his large house in the city, where he lives with his black housekeeper, Female (pronounced fee-mol-ee), and the two siblings get to know each other, as well as remember their childhood in the circus; however, Paul's behavior seems to suggest he has also more predatory intentions for his sister. That night in the city, a hooker arrives at a cheap, scummy motel to meet up with a client, only to be attacked and nearly killed by a black leopard hiding in the room. The next day, a team of zoologists, led by New Orleans Zoo curator Oliver Yates, are called to the motel and manage to tranquilize and capture the leopard, which is still trapped in the room. Meanwhile, Irena finds that Paul has disappeared and, following Female's advice, decides to see the sights of New Orleans, finding her way to the zoo and being drawn to the captured black leopard, which has been put on exhibition there. She stays after the zoo has closed to sketch a drawing of him and meets Yates, whom she initially runs from. After getting acquainted, the two of them have dinner and he offers her a job working at the zoo's gift shop. On her first day, she becomes acquainted with one of Yates' assistants, Alice Perrin, but tragedy strikes that afternoon when the other assistant, Joe Creigh, is attacked by the leopard, which rips his arm off and causes him to bleed to death. Yates feels he has no choice but to euthanize the cat, only to then find that he's gone from the cage, having left behind a strange, gooey residue. Paul returns home that night and acts like anything but a brother when he comes off as seductive towards Irena, telling her that he's the only one who can touch her and her the only who can touch him. She runs from Paul, who disappears again when she flags down a police officer, and he and his partner search the house, finding a cage in the basement that contains chains and human bones. The police believe that Paul may have been the owner of the black leopard and, with him still at large, they urge Irena to find somewhere else to live. She takes up with Yates, as the two of them are clearly attracted to each other, but Irena has a sense of fear about their relationship and, as things goes on and she learns more about her and Paul, it becomes clear that fear is very justified.
That night, Paul shows back up and Irena tries to find comfort from him, only for him to begin speaking to her in a menacing and sexual way, talking about how he knows her body is burning for Yates and adds that they can only be with each other. Horrified by his advances, as well as what he says to her about odd things that she experienced in her childhood, she now refuses to believe that he's her brother and runs away from him, flagging down a police officer. Paul disappears and Irena decides not to have the assault written up, when the police, acting on their dog's behavior, find the cage of chains and human bones in the house's basement. As the police believe that Paul may have been intending to kill Irena, it's suggested she find somewhere else to live and Yates provides her with one, before taking her to a lake house in the country. By this point, it's become clear that there is indeed a mutual attraction between the two of them but, when Yates tries to act on it, Irena refuses out of fear, not knowing what might happen, given what Paul told her and how different she's always felt. That night, Irena awakens to find herself being pulled out to where Yates is sleeping, prompting her to touch herself while looking at him, and then walks out into the wilderness and removes her nightgown to wander around like an animal. Able to see in the dark in an unnatural way, with bright colors making everything stand out, Irena hunts down and kills a rabbit, an act that leaves her so horrified that, when she returns to the house and Yates turns on the light, she screams, "Don't look at me!" and smashes the lamp. Now knowing for sure that there's something unnatural and alien about her, scared that she may lose her mind as she believes Paul has, Irena attempts to leave Yates, fearing what she may do to him, but he refuses to allow her to, telling her that he loves her. She continues staying with him and eventually has a run-in with Paul when he bursts into her window, asking her to save him by making love to him and living with him as incestuous mates, just as their parents did. Despite her brother's insistence that there's no other way for either of them to go on, Irena refuses to believe that she's like him and turns him down. Paul then attempts to kill them both, prompting Irena to feign agreement to his desire so she can slash him across the hand with a piece of broken glass and escape. Shortly afterward, Paul is killed by Alice and Yates in his leopard form, which causes Irena to let out an anguished cry, knowing that she's now alone in the world.
Desperate to know who and what she is, Irena talks with Female, who was arrested after the grisly discovery in the basement, who tells that she can merely live the way Paul did and that it won't make any difference where she goes. Upon leaving for Richmond, Irena has a strange dream where she learns the truth of her heritage from Paul and that her race can only mate with each other; otherwise, they change into leopards and must kill in order to become human again. Irena returns to New Orleans and, after stalking and frightening Alice, apparently out of jealousy over her own attraction to Yates, goes to his house. Yates is so charmed by her that, when she heads upstairs while removing her clothes at the same time, he follows suit and the two of them have sex. I'm guessing that she did it both out of her love for Yates as well as because she wanted to see if her dream was right. Sure enough, it is true, as Irena transforms after she wakes up following the sex but she finds herself unable to kill Yates, even in leopard form. Evading the authorities, Irena makes her way to the lake house and kills its old caretaker, Yeatman Brewer, in order to become human again. When Yates arrives and confronts her with a rifle, Irena explains that she could never kill him because of how she loves him and asks him to kill her. When he refuses, she then asks him to set her free by making love to her again so she can be with her own kind. He does so and the movie ends with Irena, in her black leopard form, as one of the animals at the zoo, taking food from Yates' hand and allowing him to scratch her neck and pet her. The last shot, with the two of them looking at each other, suggests that, even under these circumstances, there's still something between them.
When you next see Paul, he meets up with a blonde, buxom tourist named Billie and ends up at a hotel with her. This is when we see that there is a truly pitiable side to him, as he tells Billie while they're in bed, naked, that he genuinely likes her but is afraid to have sex with her, knowing what will happen if he does. He also alludes to the extent of the "nightmare" that he mentioned to Irena, saying, "Every time, I pray it won't happen again." In other words, he's spent his entire life having to placate his sexual desires and then, in turn, kill in order to return to human form, further evidenced by the bones found in his basement and other remains of prostitutes and female runaways that the police say they've come across over the years. That, coupled with the revelation that, ever since the death of his parents through suicide, Paul has been in and out of mental institutions since he was twelve, further shows that he's not simply villainous. In any case, Paul, sure enough, ends up transforming and killing Billie, after which he awakens in the bathroom, naked and disoriented, and only gradually realizes what happened when he walks into the doorway and sees the completely trashed bedroom and Billie's mutilated corpse on the floor. Knowing he can't go on like this, Paul eventually tracks Irena down to Yates' house and breaks through the window into her bedroom one night. Desperate, he tells her, "Save me. Only you can stop this killing. You've got to make love with me, as brother and sister. I've searched for you for so long, from one foster home to another. We can live together as mates, just as our parents did. You do know that they were brother and sister, don't you?" Now, it's very clear that his search was out of sheer desperation, and the offhand remark he had at the beginning, about having the same daydream as she did of her brother saving her, takes on more significance. Paul also tries to spare Irena from going through the horror of killing her beloved Yates, something he himself has gone through many times, and attempts to dissuade her by telling her that Yates really loves her animalistic, dangerous side. When Irena still refuses him, Paul attempts to end the killing the only other way he knows how: by killing them both. Frightened, Irena makes him lower his guard by appearing to agree to be his mate, only to stab him in the hand with a shard of glass and escape.
Upon his first meeting with her when he sees her sketching the leopard at the zoo after closing time, it doesn't take Yates long to become captivated by Irena, as she invites him to dinner when she says that she simply needs to eat something in order to get over the dizzy spell and fever she momentarily gets. As they talk and get to know each other, Yates offers her a job at the zoo's gift shop, remarking, "I can pull some strings. I'll talk to the curator. I'll be right back." In fact, he's so smitten with her that, during her first day on the job, he's dressed up quite nicely, compared to the more casual clothes he often wears. After Irena has her first unsettling encounter with Paul and the discovery of the human remains in the cage in his basement, Yates, convinced that Irena is not involved with it, gives her a place to stay at his house and, the next day, drives her up to his lake house in the country. On the way up, he does what he can to cheer Irena up, which works, and when they arrive, he says, "This is it. Bayou plantation. One of these days, I'm gonna buy you a plantation." The two of them become even closer during their stay there, with Yates clearly wanting to consummate their relationship, but when Irena rebuffs him out of fear, he does the gentlemanly thing and respects her wishes. Despite being a little disturbed by the glimpse of Irena's wild side that he gets after her nighttime "hunt" in the woods near the lake house, Yates is determined to keep her with him and take care of her, as he tells her that she's the first person he's ever really loved in his whole life; he also adds that he doesn't care if they can never sleep together. However, his growing preoccupation with her and the stress it causes begins to cause tension between him and his friends, especially Alice, whom he seemed to have had a relationship with once. And it isn't long before Yates learns the hard way about the black leopard's true origin and its connection to Irena and Paul, when the latter transforms and attacks him in the house. After the leopard is gunned down, Yates performs an autopsy on the body and is horrified when a human arm comes out before the whole thing disintegrates.
Yates and his crew have a friend in the police force, Bill Searle (Scott Paulin), who's the one who calls them in to handle the black leopard in the motel and, after they captured the cat and are trying to figure out what to do with him, he suggests putting him down, as he sees him as a menace. He also happens to be the policemen who Irena flags down when she's being chased by Paul, leading to them discovering what's in the basement. After Paul kills Billie and the police launch a search for the leopard, the pressure of what's going on and the fact that, after a week, the search is about to be called off, mounts until Searle alludes to it being Yates' fault because he didn't allow the cat to be euthanized. Yates, in response, punches Searle to the ground and, while he immediately apologizes, Searle growls, "Yeah, well fuck you," and is never seen again, suggesting that caused a major falling out between them. Detective Brandt (Frankie Faison, although Paul Schrader decided to have Albert Hall dub his voice) is another member of the police force whom the zoologists work closely for, as he calls them in following the discovery in Paul's basement, believing that it's proof that he was sacrificing women to the leopard in a bizarre ritual, and he does the same after Billie's death, warning them of the gruesomeness of the scene by telling them, "Hope you haven't had breakfast." He also appears to have something of a morbid sense of humor, chuckling at the ironic fact that Paul picked Billie up at a cemetery. Familiar genre actor Lynn Lowry appears in one scene as Ruthie, the prostitute who shows up at the motel to take care of Paul, only to find evidence of his transformation into a leopard and then get attacked by said leopard, which badly maims her foot, although she manages to escape. Billie (Tessa Richards), the tourist whom Paul comes across at a New Orleans cemetery and ends up in a hotel room with, comes across as something of an airhead in how she talks and it's suggested by one of her friends with her that she's likely a woman of easy virtue. However, as ditzy as she is, mistaking Paul's "problem" for not being able to get it up when they're in bed, she does come across as naively sweet and understanding towards him, helping to make Paul's words that he likes her sincere and making it all the more sad that she ends up being slaughtered. John Larroquette has a brief role here as Bronte Judson, Yates' partner in the zoo who, eager to cut down the costs of the leopard's acquisition, is eager to discuss euthanizing him, only for Yates to angrily admonish him for it. Finally, there's Yeatman Brewer (Emery Hollier), the elderly caretaker of Yates' lake house who, near the end of the movie, ends up as fodder for Irena's bloodlust so she can temporarily become human again.
For me, Cat People's biggest strengths are in its visuals; this film is an absolute knockout to look at. The cinematography by John Bailey, who worked with Paul Schrader before on American Gigolo and who would work with him again on a number of other films, is absolutely lush, with great use of lighting and color throughout. A number of scenes are shot in a notable deep orange color, giving off the feeling of a late afternoon or low interior lighting, and the nighttime scenes are often shot with pitch-black areas of darkness and otherworldly white and deep blue streaks of moonlight, which always make me think of the movies that John Carpenter worked on with his go-to cinematographer, Dean Cundey. While he never does anything very showy with it, Schrader does employ some interesting uses of camera movement, like long tracking shots when Paul follows Irena at the airport upon first seeing her, when he walks up the stairs in his house and then heads down the hall to her bedroom, and there appears to be some use of Steadicam during a sequence in the third act when Alice is out for a jog and Irena appears to be stalking her in black leopard form. Plus, here and there, you get an interesting bit of framing, often involving mirrors, like during the first confrontational scene between Irena and Paul where you see him in the frame but she's offscreen, reflected in a mirror behind him, and when you see him in the hotel bathroom after he's killed Billie, reflected in two different panes of glass in the mirror. And Schrader must have been really proud of his sets and the locations he managed to secure, as there's almost always a big, overhead or wide shot that allows you to see every little detail of the environments the characters are in.
Speaking of which, this movie really shows off the beauty of New Orleans, as there are a number of those aforementioned wide and overhead shots, especially during the little montage of Irena on her walking tour, that display the lovely architecture of the buildings and some of the old landmarks that are to be found there (as well as a cutout of Marilyn Monroe from that famous scene in The Seven Year Itch). I also really like the beauty shots of the surrounding countryside, like the stretches of marshland, particularly the picturesque one where Yates' lake house is located; the nearby woods where Irena's animal instincts first come to the surface and where you later see a search team looking for the black leopard; and the old cemetery where Paul meets Billie. As for the actual sets, designed by Ferdinando Scarfiotti, they're well done and look nice, with some of the more notable ones being the interior of the main building at the zoo where Yates and everyone works, which serves as an office space and research area upstairs, whereas down below, it has every type of work area involving the animals in one large space, such as the other side of their cages and a lab where they can be examined and autopsied; the big display area for the animals where the black leopard is kept (the zoo was a real location but that part of it was actually constructed on the Universal backlot); the interiors of Paul and Yates' traditional two-story New Orleans homes; and the creepy basement of the former where they find the cage full of chains and human remains, which clashes very much with the more benign upstairs. There are also some interiors that are strikingly colorful, like the vibrant rainbow of colors on display inside the church where Paul works (it looks akin to what you'd see years later in the Warren Beatty Dick Tracy movie, as do the brightly-colored clothes worn by the kids who are seen visiting the zoo) and the lockers in the background of the train station that are anything but drab, like you'd expect. Even the inside of the little seafood restaurant where Irena and Yates have their first dinner has some unexpectedly colorful lights here and there. Like I said, the movie is very much a feast for the eyes.
The most startling visuals in the film come during the couple of times where you see the prehistoric world where the rituals that led to the lineage that eventually produced Irena and Paul were performed. It's definitely the prime example of Paul Schrader wanting to go for a mythic approach to this material, as this is a very romanticized and otherworldly vision of early man. It takes place in this barren landscape that's just as desolate as it is beautiful (that first wide shot of the place is mind-blowing), with sand that's just as red as it can be and covers a lot of human bones; constant wind whipping up dust; a gnarled tree on a small plateau surrounded by large stones, where black leopards can often be seen; and primitive people milling about, some of whom are actually painted in colors and patterns resembling cats, such as spots or, in the case of one guy, sheer black (in fact, when you actually see the people, it kind of reminds me of stuff you'd see in other movies of the time like Conan the Barbarian or The Beastmaster, as in that bigger than life approach to ancient eras in human history). The place looks just as magical at night, which you see when a woman is offered to the leopards, and after that, you see her go to a small den that has a drawing of leopard on the outside and is crimson in color on the inside, where a leopard is waiting for her. When Irena has the dream where Paul guides her to the tree and explains what they are and how they came to be, the place looks even more fantastical, bathed in orange/red all-around and the tree completely full of leopards, one of whom is apparently Irena's mother, as you hear a female voice calling her name when it snarls. Add to all this some terrific background mattes by the great Albert Whitlock and the sensual music score and you've got a series of images you're not likely to forget any time soon.
For the most part, this is a completely different movie from the original but there are nods of the hat to it sprinkled throughout, with some being very obvious to those who've seen the earlier film, like three of the main characters having the same first names as their 40's counterparts (although, here Irena is pronounced "I-ree-nah" instead of "i-ray-nah"), while others are more subtle and possibly even unintentional. For instance, Irena reveals that she strives to be a commercial artist, the very job that Simone Simon's character had in the original, and the moment where she draws a sketch of the black leopard in his cage is very much like the opening scene of the first movie. Speaking of which, the opening scene here is something of a variation on an opening for the original that was in the script, one which depicted some of the events in the Serbian legends that Irena speaks of, but was ultimately deleted by Val Lewton. Also, I don't know if this was intentional, but when Oliver Yates is attacked by Paul in Irena's bedroom, he grabs what looks like a T-square to try and fight him off, akin to what Kent Smith's character did when Irena trapped him and Alice in their office. A very obvious reference to the original is the scene in the bar where Irena and Alice are having drinks and talking and a strange elderly woman comes up to the former and calls her, "Mi hermana," meaning "my sister," a couple of times before leaving. However, here it doesn't have the impact that it did in the original, where it served to remind Irena of her fears by suggesting that she may have come face-to-face with one of the Cat People in her country's legends. Moreover, it comes straight out of the blue, as Irena is not Spanish in any way, nor was that tavern ever suggested to be specifically Spanish in nature like the Serbian restaurant in the original, and it feels like the only reason the moment is even here is because they did it in the original.
Where the movie is the most similar to the original is during a little section in the third act where Alice, while jogging, appears to be stalked by Irena in her leopard form, only for it to lead to a fake-out where she runs into a big dog that jumps up and licks her before she goes on her way. In other words, this is a take on the scene from the original where Alice is stalked as she walks home in the dark, right down to her sensing that something is following her, and the dog is meant to represent the bus that provided the fake scare there... except that, in a following cut, there's a moment where she's running and a trolley suddenly comes in from the other side of the screen with a very loud noise. So they go for two jump-scares in quick succession instead of just the one, but it doesn't work because they'd already blown their load with the dog and, what's more, the trolley comes quite a bit into the frame before it makes the loud noise that's meant to startle you, rather than the other way around as it was with the bus in the original. If they wanted to do this, they should have eliminated the dog altogether and then put in the trolley, as well as have it make a sound, preferably something akin to a growl or roar, before we actually see it. I can understand Paul Schrader not wanting to completely copy the original but the way he went about it here doesn't work and, again, it feels like the bit with the trolley was put in simply because it was something the original did. Plus, the sequence, in general, is nowhere near as suspenseful or creepy, one, because it's brightly lit, even the bit that takes place at night, and two, this park she's jogging through is not as eerie and claustrophobic as that reverberating sort of open tunnel from the original.
In any case, this leads into what is the most blatant copy of the 1942 film: Alice goes to a nearby pool to have a dip, hears what sounds like a large, growling cat in the hallway outside the locker room, and quickly dives into the pool. Here, the lights are on and then suddenly turned off after she jumps in but, otherwise, it plays out exactly the same, with Alice hearing the sounds of the leopard growling in the darkness and catching glimpses of its shadow, shots of the water's shimmering reflection on the ceiling and wall, and Alice becoming more and more frightened until she lets out a scream, with the lights then coming on to reveal Irena, who tells Alice that she was looking for Oliver Yates. The scene even ends with Alice discovering that her robe has been clawed up. Like the one before it, this recreated scene does not work as well as it did before, as it's not as creepy (mainly because it's in color rather than stark, noirish black-and-white and is not as darkly lit as it could be), there's no anticipation and dread since we've long since learned what's lurking in the dark rather than it being suggested, and it's another scene that makes no dramatic sense. Like I said before, the jealous rivalry between Irena and Alice is not played on as much in this film, especially not Irena's part, so the sudden hostility Alice feels and Irena's acting rather sinister about "accidentally" scaring her feels out of place. Also, the rules behind the transformations into black leopards in this film are very specific and this scene really seems to violate them. You could argue that Alice may have been hallucinating the presence of the leopard but it wouldn't make sense since she isn't privy to their supernatural elements and plus, how could Irena have clawed her robe like that if she weren't in leopard form?
Another thing that this film does have in common with its predecessor is that cats do have a part in the story besides in the details of Irena and Paul's transformations. There's not as much overt cat symbolism to be found here but you do have small moments, like Paul showing Irena the cart that their grandfather bought for the circus and commenting that the chimp in the top part of it would annoy the cat down below by tossing his garbage down there, as well as a cat-themed nursery rhyme the two of them recite while juggling. Besides that, there is the backstory that the two of them were involved with a circus that featured big cats when they were very young, with Paul staying around them until he was ten. Moreover, during their first confrontational scene, Paul, referring to Irena's growing love for Oliver Yates, asks, "Will you leap through his hoop? Take his head in your mouth like an egg?", and you see plenty of cat architecture at the zoo, as well as other types of large species like lions and cheetahs. The one that really made me smirk when I first saw it, though, is when Irena walks into the kitchen one morning to talk with Female and, while neither of them acknowledge it, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Top Cat, is playing on the TV. It always amuses me when you see something that benign in a movie like this. Speaking of which, later, when Irena is at the bus station, there's a catfood commercial playing on the little TVs there, the jingle of which sounds like it's set to the tune of Yankee Doodle.
Also like the original, Irena and Paul's animalistic natures are hinted at before they're put front and center but, as you might expect, it's a little more overt than it was there. Examples include the cat-like stances they sometimes take, such as when Paul gracefully jumps up onto the foot of Irena's bed and the way Irena jumps up when Paul bursts through her window near the end of the second act, when Paul's eyes turn green and inhuman, the way Irena is able to easily scurry up a tree at the zoo when she first meets Yates, how she's able to dive over the railing of the balcony and land without hurting herself, the animal cage full of human remains down in the basement, and the unnatural cry Irena lets out when she finds that Paul has been killed. And yet, despite this film not being anywhere near as subtle as the original, the only full-on transformation from human to cat that you see in the movie is when Irena changes after having sex with Yates near the end of the movie. You get hints of it beforehand, like when you see the furry claws breaking through the flesh of Paul's hand at one point, the aforementioned green eyes he sometimes has, and the residue left behind by their changes, but for the most part, the most you see is the black leopard itself. In fact, there's one moment that feels a lot like a more amped up take on Val Lewton's minimalist approach to the genre. After Irena escapes from Paul in her bedroom in Yates' house, Yates himself comes upstairs to talk with Irena, only to find the nearly transformed Paul waiting for him. In a flash of lightning, you get a brief glimpse of Paul halfway into his leopard form sitting in the corner, when he screams, "Oliver!" in a voice that's almost completely alien in sound and texture. You can tell that Malcolm McDowell is wearing some cat-like makeup appliances on his face but, unless you pause the movie, you won't get much detail, and then, as he approaches Yates to attack, Paul crawls into a section of deep shadow and all you see are his glowing eyes in the dark. When he emerges, he's now completely changed into a leopard, thanks to an editing effect that is so subtle, as well as hidden by the darkness, you practically can't see it. If he hadn't been set in not showing anything at all, that is something I could have totally seen Lewton putting in one of his films.
In the dream that Irena has late in the film, Paul tells her the race of Cat People the two of them stem from came about due to ancient sacrifices that led to human souls taking hold of black leopards until they themselves became human and that they can only safely mate with their own kid. If they have sex with a normal human, they transform into their leopard forms and can only become human again by killing. The change also seems to happen as a result of overwhelming lust or pain and anger, as Paul transforms twice without having sex: when he's waiting for the hooker at the motel and after Irena cuts his hand during the scene in her bedroom at Yates' house. The nature of the change, which consists of the leopard growing and forming with the human body until it can finally tear through it and shirk it off, is very different from the way werewolf transformations are often depicted, with the bodies themselves twisting and cracking into the shape of a wolf, and the same goes for the reversion back to human. We never see this change in action, only the aftermath, but the autopsy that Yates performs on Paul's leopard form, revealing a human arm within, suggests that it happens in a very similar manner. Both changes leave behind a wet, sticky residue that is later revealed to be the remains of the one form, which disintegrates immediately after the other side has been freed, expelling a noxious green gas in the process, and it seems to take a little bit for the leopard side to completely submerge after one has changed back, given how Paul had bits of black fur and hanging pieces of flesh when he awakened after having killed Billie and how Irena's voice had a deepness to it right after she killed Yeatman Brewer to become human again. By the way, the bloodlust that's necessary for them to change and revert respectively is why the stalk and pool scenes make no sense here: if Irena really was a leopard there, what did she do to become human again? Was ripping apart Alice's robe enough of a kill for it to work because, if so, that's a stretch.
Here's another thing: it's suggested at one point early on that there may be a vague psychic link between Irena and Paul, as when Paul has been tranquilized and captured in his leopard form, Irena suddenly bolts up awake back at the house, appearing to sense that there's something wrong with him and even walks over to his bedroom door to see if he's okay. It could be that she just happened to be having a bad dream about him at that exact moment but for me personally, the idea of the link between them sort of explains that inexplicable dream sequence Irena has while riding the train to Richmond. I say "sort of," though, because, while it would explain his presence there, it still doesn't answer the question as to how that dream, as visually spectacular as it is, provides her with the exact answer to the question of what she is and how her transformation will come about. You could say that both of the visions of the prehistoric landscape are dreams that Irena has always had, simply as a byproduct of her lineage, which would explain why it looks so otherworldly, but even if we're talking about the opening up of something deep within her subconscious, that doesn't make much sense either, as we're not talking about a repressed memory of the truth or anything else that would come out in a dream. It doesn't completely ruin the movie for me but this dream is another one of the holes that I can poke in the story.
Paul Schrader's assessment that the film has "more skin than blood" is a very accurate one, because if there's anything that it's known for, it's for being a borderline soft-core porn that has elements of horror sprinkled throughout. The very tagline is, "An erotic fantasy about the animal in us all," which, along with that poster I put in the introduction, should clue you in as to what its priorities are going to be. Indeed, this movie does everything the makers of the 40's film probably wished they could've done, bringing its notion of the beastly, dangerous side of human nature being tied to sexuality right to the forefront by making it impossible for one of the Cat People to have sex without transforming into a beautiful but deadly black leopard. Moreover, there's nudity everywhere here. You not only get to see Natassja Kinski's incredible body in all its glory, and I mean all of it, many times, along with the very voluptuous Tessa Richards, but you also see Annette O'Toole and Lynn Lowry topless, with the latter spending much of her brief screentime in very stripperific clothes, and even Malcolm McDowell and John Heard each get naked a couple of times to give the ladies something to look at it (but, then again, McDowell showing it off was certainly not uncommon during that early part of his career; after Caligula, what you see of him here is downright tame by comparison). Add to that the notions of sibling incest, bondage (when Oliver Yates ties Irena to the bed at the end before he sets her free), oral sex (you can tell Billie is giving Paul a blowjob at one point), and a moment where Irena actually licks her menstrual blood from her fingers after she's had sex for the first time, plus the evocative score and David Bowie's searing theme song, and you have what has to be one of the kinkiest mainstream horror films that's ever been made.
As focused as it is on eroticism, the movie doesn't forget to give horror fans what they crave. There aren't a lot of gory makeup effects to be found in this movie but, when they need to be here, Tom Burman, who'd worked on films like the 70's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Exterminator, My Bloody Valentine, The Hand, and Happy Birthday to Me, among many others, provides some truly memorable ones. You see Ruthie's foot get horribly maimed by Paul as a black leopard; Joe Creight's arm get ripped off, with blood completely covering the section of the floor around him and running up to Irena's feet as she stands nearby; the long-decayed remains in Paul's basement; a glimpse of the grisly aftermath of Paul attacking and killing Billie, which includes her severed arm on the bed and her bloody, covered body; a fake leopard body for John Heard to cut into during the autopsy scene, which is very realistic and hard to watch, and you actually see a human arm jut out when he opens it up before it completely disintegrates; and the residue from the transformations. Speaking of the transformations, exactly what they consist of is first hinted when you see a leopard's claws bursting through the flesh of Paul's hand but you don't see it full on until Irena transforms near the end of the movie. It's very quick but still manages to be well-detailed and easily one of the best moments in the film, as you see her face and eyes quickly become more and more cat-like during a sequence of cuts, her spine arches up in a manner similar to a moment in the famous transformation in An American Werewolf in London, her breasts actually retract into her chest, and her flesh finally rips apart and reveals the full black leopard. Very cool scene and definitely one of the more unique transformation sequences in movies (like I said in the introduction, it blew my mind when I first saw it on Bride of Monster Mania, especially since I'm pretty sure I hadn't even see the American Werewolf in London metamorphosis yet).
The movie begins in that prehistoric world I've been talking about, with the camera pulling back from a sandy patch of ground during the opening credits, the wind blowing it away to gradually reveal skulls and other bones buried beneath it, and you get a glimpse of what life is like in this place, with a black leopard sitting by that lone tree, watching over as people get water from a well, wolves snacking on some bones right across from them, and some women doing what looks like attempting to find any fertile soil they can in this barren landscape. One of the women is suddenly snatched away by a group of painted, spear-carrying men, much to the protest of an older woman who I can guess is her mother. She's carried over to the tree, as we get a magnificent shot of it framed in front of a brewing sandstorm (seriously, you can't tell me you're not blown away by how amazing that looks, especially given that this was done in the days before digital effects), and is then tied to it, with the other woman sitting nearby and watching her until nightfall. That's when a growling, roaring leopard appears and slowly makes his way up to the woman, rears up on his hind legs, and puts his paws on her shoulders, appearing to nuzzle her rather than attack. The next morning, the woman is led to an opening in some rocks, to the left of which is a drawing of a leopard, and is silently prompted to walk inside. When she does so, she finds a leopard, probably the same one from the night before, resting on a small ledge, waiting for her, roaring as she approaches. The transition from a close-up of her face to our first look at Irena Gallier seems to suggest that this woman may be one of her direct ancestors.
The next significant sequence begins when Female sees Paul heading upstairs after Irena has gone to bed, watching him with a knowing look. He then makes his way up there, walks down the hall towards Irena's room, enters, silently walks up to the foot of her bed, and gracefully jumps on it, peering down at her as she sleeps with a menacing expression while growling at the same time. The scene then transitions to a sleazy motel, where the hooker, Ruthie, arrives late and heads upstairs to Room 3 to meet up with a "john" who's been waiting for her. Walking upstairs and entering the room, she apologizes to her client for being late and, thinking he's in the bathroom, as the light's on and the door's ajar, she introduces herself. When she doesn't get a response, even at the little crack she makes, she figures the guy to be the strong, silent type and goes on to explain the cost of her "services," helping herself to some money in the wallet she finds in the pair of pants on the nearby chair, and then explains the types of accepted payment and that tipping is allowed. She sits down on the bed, having removed her blouse, and waits to get down to business, when she puts her hand on something moist on the bed. Seeing that it's some type of strange residue, she then notices something long, black, and furry sticking out from under the bed. She nudges it with her foot and continues inspecting the material on the bed, when the object suddenly flaps along the floor. She pushes it a couple of more times and it reacts to each touch. Suddenly, the bed thumps up and down and Ruthie gets clawed badly around her right ankle. She lunges for the door and manages to get through it and slam it in the attacking creature's face when it come for her, before making her way down the stairs by crawling. She turns and looks at the horrible slashes on her foot, as the scene fades to black.
The next morning is when Oliver Yates and his crew arrive at the motel, where they meet up with Bill Searle, who explains to them about the black leopard and what happened. When they see the leopard on a security monitor in the office via a camera in the room and realize how big he is, Yates decides to tranquilize and net him as quickly as possible. They then set everything up outside, with Yates preparing to climb up a ladder to reach the room through the back window, equipping himself with a walkie-talkie so Alice can keep in touch with him while watching the security monitor. As Joe Creight holds the ladder steady, Yates climbs up to the window, while Alice and Searle walk back into the office. Yates reaches the top, which doesn't go unnoticed by the leopard, which Alice sees on the monitor and warns him. Yates is preoccupied with cleaning the glass, which is all misted up, so he can see better, and this little distraction gives the leopard the opportunity to smash through it to get at him. The ladder gets knocked loose for a second and Yates almost falls off, but he manages to grab onto the back of it when he tumbles down there; however, he does drop his walkie-talkie, which smashes to bits on the concrete below. It becomes clear that the leopard is trying to escape through the window but Yates, once he climbs back on the front of the ladder, pulls his tranquilizer pistol, cocks it, climbs back to the top, and, quickly getting a clear shot, fires. He hits the leopard on the side of his left back thigh, sending him crashing wildly along the walls and hitting the floor hard enough to send chunks of the office's ceiling falling, startling Alice and Searle. The leopard continues flailing around wildly and lunges at the window one more time. At that moment, Irena bolts up awake at the house, yelling Paul's name, and then, as the leopard starts to succumb to the tranquilizer, she walks over to his bedroom and knocks on the door, getting no answer. The leopard settles down and lies down on the floor, just about out. Yates and his crew then come upstairs and place a net over him.
After touring New Orleans for a whole day and finding no sign of Paul, Irena finds her way to the zoo and is drawn to the snarling and agitated black leopard, to the point where she pulls out her sketchpad and begins drawing him when he sits down in a corner. Then, that night, while working late, Yates first catches sight of Irena as she's still standing there, drawing the leopard. He walks out there and shines his flashlight on her, startling her and prompting her to take off running, with him in hot pursuit. After a little bit of running, she heads for a tree up against a brick wall and easily scurries up to the top, which is where Yates finds her when he gets there. He manages to coax her down and their relationship then develops from there. Following their dinner, where he offers her a job at the zoo, you get a bit of a cute little montage of the place's daily routines, as Alice is shown spraying an elephant down with a hose before helping lead a whole group of them into a nearby pool of water for their bath, Joe Creight feeding a couple of tigers some slabs of meat, and then bringing the orangutan, D.J., some fruit before getting caught up in whatever program he's watching on that little TV set (I swear, I can never get over that). Following the scene between Alice and Irena having drinks at that bar, and the moment with the woman who calls the latter, "Mi hermana," Irena is shown working in the gift shop another day, only to hear the black leopard roaring in the main building nearby. There, while Alice is talking on the phone, Creight prepares to wash the leopard's cage with the hose but, as Irena comes in, he finds that the leopard isn't too thrilled with this and obstinately refuses to go in the back. Seeing this, Irena walks up to the cage and, seeing the leopard, comments that he's afraid. She looks long and hard at his face and appears to see something in his eyes that's frighteningly familiar to her. He then lunges at the bars and Creight has her move back. He continues doing so and Creight asks Yates for the cattle prod, while the leopard gets ferocious enough to stick his arms through the bars and swipe at them. Taking the prod and strapping it to his right wrist, Creight zaps at the lunging leopard, when he manages to reach through the bars and grab ahold of his arm. He pulls him into the bars and fiercely bites and tears at his arm, as Yates tries to pull Creight away. But it's no use, as Creight's arm is ripped completely off and he collapses to the floor. Yates tells Alice to call the paramedic and tries to stop the bleeding, but blood gushes uncontrollably out of the wound, covering the floor and rolling up to the horrified Irena's feet, as she looks at the continuously snarling leopard.
Enraged by this, Yates drives with Alice to his house, where he grabs a rifle out of its case. They then return to the zoo and enter the main compound, only to find no sign of the leopard in his cage, except for some strange remains; Yates then tells Alice that they'd better let the police about the leopard's disappearance. Meanwhile, at Paul Gallier's house, Irena, distraught over what she saw, goes up to her bedroom and sees that Paul has suddenly returned. After he says that he was in "prison, praying for the condemned," she tries to tell him about what happened, only for him to suddenly start talking and acting in a way no brother should. He begins grabbing at her clothes, telling her that she needs him, and when he looks up at her with eyes that are clearly inhuman, she shoves him away and rushes for the nearby railing. She falls over it but lands perfectly on her feet and heads down the street; Paul isn't far behind as he gets to his feet and elegantly jumps over the railing himself. Seeing her behind him, Irena runs and flags down an approaching police car, but when she looks back, she sees no sign of him. As a result, she decides not to fill out a formal report, and the officer, who happens to be Bill Searle, is about to write it off, when a colleague pulls up in his own squad car and the police dog in back begins barking crazily. Deciding to look into it, they discover the horrific secret in the basement, and after Yates and Alice are called over, Detective Brandt takes them downstairs and shows them cage where Paul apparently has been keeping the leopard and feeding it human victims. With this, Female is taken to jail and Irena begins staying with Yates.
The next day, while Irena is spending time with Yates at his lake house, Paul ends up meeting Billie at a cemetery, introducing himself by asking to take her picture, and then, in an interesting bit of juxtaposition, the film then cuts to Yates, who happens to be snapping pictures of Irena. That's not the only example of it, as Irena is then shown rebuffing Yates' sexual advances out of fear, while Paul is now in a hotel room with Billie, dreading what he knows will happen if they have sex. In the next scene, Irena awakens in the middle of the night and walks out to where Yates is sleeping on the couch. She's compelled to touch herself as she looks at him, when the sounds of the night prompt her to turn out the lamp, walk out the door, and head off into the nearby wilderness. She removes her nightgown and wanders around a small clearing completely naked, during which we see her point-of-view, which is now similar to night vision, with the colors subtly shifting from hue to another as she moves (this effect, created by Robert Blalack, is literally called "cat vision" in the credits); her hearing is also more advanced now, as the sounds tend to echo. After glancing at a snake, she approaches a small rabbit that's sitting on the ground, and after watching an owl fly off from a nearby branch, she hones in on it 100% and begins stalking it. It hops away but she follows after it and pounces on it when it stops by a bush. The film then cuts to Yates, who wakes up when he hears the front door open with a creak and looks to see it slowly close. He then looks over and sees Irena moving in the darkness, but when he turns on the lamp, she screams, "Don't look at me," and smacks the lamp to the floor, although he was able to see blood around her mouth. It's revealed that she's not the only one who had a literally wild night, as Paul awakens naked in his hotel room bathroom. Walking up to the mirror and seeing that he's come out of a transformation, he cleans himself up (actually chewing on a piece of hanging flesh from his stomach) and gets his wits about. Everything then appears to come back to him as he walks to the doorway and sees the aftermath of what happened, which is blood splattered on the wall, scratches on the bed's headboard, the lamp knocked over and the phone off the hook, the pillows ripped open, and Billie's severed arm leaning off the foot of the bed, with her sheet-covered body lying on the floor.
After that, it isn't long before Paul tracks Irena down as she, reluctantly, continues staying with Yates at his house. One stormy night, he bursts through her bedroom window (I'm not sure if you're supposed to see him in the shot where he's visibly preparing to jump from a branch or if that was a goof) and tries to get her to make love with him to keep him from killing again. When she staunchly refuses and stabs him in the hand with a shard of glass after he attempts to kill them both, she manages to escape into the night. His hand bleeding badly, Paul stumbles over to the nearby mirror, collapsing at one point, and as he looks at himself, he sees the furry knuckles and claws of the leopard beginning to burst through the flesh of his hand, with the camera panning up to show his reflection, revealing that his eyes have become cat-like again. Later, Yates arrives home with Alice after the two of them have spent the day helping the police in tracking down the leopard and he heads up to Irena's bedroom to ask her to join them in a cup of coffee. When he sees the light go out under the rim of the door, followed by the sound of smashing glass, he goes in and, hearing something in a corner in the other side of the room, looks in that direction. A flash of lightning reveals the nearly-transformed Paul, who crawls towards him and transforms completely into a leopard in the darkness. Yates grabs the only weapon he can to fend the leopard off, which just happens to be a T-square, but the leopard quickly knocks it out of his hand, sending it smashing through bottles on a nearby dresser. He screams for Alice, ripping off the window curtain and throwing it over the leopard, and when Alice rushes upstairs and opens the door, Yates jumps back against the wall, prompting her to immediately shut the door. The leopard smacks the door knob off the door and Yates, standing on the bed, yells for Alice to get the shotgun from downstairs. She rushes down there, smashes open the gun case, and heads back upstairs, only to find then that she can't open the door. With Yates now using the severed back of a chair to keep the leopard at bay, he braces himself when he jumps at him, only for Alice to then kick in the door and fire. She manages to score a direct hit and sends the leopard crashing through the window and onto the street below. The two of them then look down to see Irena approach the dead leopard and let out an anguished scream that has something of an inhuman texture to it.
What follows is the autopsy scene, which is pretty hard to watch, as Yates, in the main building at the zoo, pulls the leopard's body out of cold storage, wheels it over to an examining table, and turns on an overhead to prepare for what he has to do (if you look closely during the close-ups of the "leopard," which is actually a cougar dyed black because real leopards are impossible to train, you can see its toes wiggling out of reflex). Bringing in his surgical instruments and putting his mask on, he takes a scalpel and slits lengthwise up the leopard's front (as you can see, the makeup effects here are sickeningly realistic, as I said before), and once he's got it wide open, he takes a pair of surgical shears and cuts away some bones with a really sickening couple of snaps. He then opens the large flap of skin, revealing the innards, only to be horrified when he sees a pair of human arms, one of which flies up as a reflex action towards him. The body then gives off a sickening green gas and Yates coughs and hacks, as it quickly disintegrates.
After that, we get the dream sequence, which begins in a way that's very reminiscent of an arthouse film. While riding a train that's taking her to Richmond, Irena is shown sitting in her seat, dozing off, as the sound slowly fades and is replaced with pure music score. The background behind her transitions to that of a station and she walks through a crowd of people before heading towards what is revealed to be a door that opens up onto the sheer orange-red desert that was seen at the beginning of the movie. As she walks through it, Paul emerges from the haze and beckons her. She follows him, as his voice can be heard explaining to her about the origin of their species and how their transformations come about. They then arrive at the tree, which has several black leopards resting amongst its branches, and Paul walks up to one of them on one of the lower branches, which then lets out a growl accompanied by a woman's voice that calls Irena's name. She realizes that this is her mother and Paul tells her, "You must return," which transitions into the sequence where Alice is running through the park and finds herself stalked at a swimming pool later that night. Since I already went into both of those scenes in detail, let's just jump ahead to the next major one, which is when Irena reunites with Yates. (Before we do, though, I want to comment that they really try to make you think that Irena is stalking Alice through the park in her leopard form, as they keep cutting back and forth between her and a set of running animal legs that are clearly not those of the dog she runs into. Given what happens at the pool, I guess she is but, again, how did she transform, how did she change back, and how did nobody notice a freaking black leopard in broad daylight?!)
At his house, Yates is in his upstairs darkroom, developing the pictures he took of Irena while they were at the lake house (as well as a photo Paul as a black leopard), when the phone rings downstairs. Walking down there, he finds it suddenly lying off the hook. He hangs it up and it immediately rings again. When he answers this time, it's Alice, telling him of what happened between her and Irena and that she feels Irena was out to harm her. He then sees Irena's reflection in the glass of a nearby picture and hangs up on Alice, telling her to stay where she is. Taking off her coat, Irena saunters upstairs, removing her blouse and tossing it aside as she goes, with Yates following not far behind. When she reaches the bedroom, she turns the bed down and pulls off her skirt, sitting there naked, waiting for him. He asks her if she's scared but when she keeps staring at him, waiting, he decides that's a "no" and strips off himself and joins her, with the two of them proceeding to have sex. Afterward, while Yates is asleep, Irena gets out of bed and walks to the bathroom down the hall, where she feels herself and then looks at the menstrual blood on her fingers. She actually licks some of it and, after looking at herself in the mirror, she washes her hands of it, clearly troubled by what she just did. She then walks back to the bed and gets back under the covers, lying there for a little bit. Glancing at her hand, she then hears the sound of a buzzing fly and, following it with her eyes, reaches up and grabs at it. It falls to the floor and she then tears through the sheets with her sharpening claws, looking around the room in a seeming panic. She turns over and grabs at the mattress with her hands, as she quickly transforms into a black leopard (you can see a tear roll down from her right eye at one point during this bit). The snarl she lets out wakes Yates up, and as she hovers over him, growling, he tries to get through to her, saying her name. It ends up working, as she jumps off him and leaps over the railing of the window. However, as she wanders through the streets below, a couple of cops on motorcycles nearly run into her. They watch as she roars at them but she then wanders off without hurting them.
Alice later arrives and picks up Yates, telling him that a leopard has been spotted near the bridge. Driving to the site, they find that the bridge has been completely cordoned off by the police. Once they get past the cops keeping back the cars, the two of them head to the edge of the blockade, where Irena is pacing back and forth on the section of the bridge she's trapped on. A helicopter comes overhead and shines its spotlight on her, agitating her. As she continues pacing, she spots Yates and then jumps over the railing and into the water below. The man in the helicopter and several officers fire into the water but don't seem to score a hit. Seeing this, Yates, knowing where Irena is probably heading, runs to his truck and drives into the country, arriving at the lake house. Rowing the little island, he comes ashore, armed with a rifle, and searches for Irena, only to be startled when he finds Yeatman Brewer's body hanging from the branches of a tree. Walking into the house, he finds Irena there and when she admits she killed Yeatman, he asks her why she didn't do the same to him. Saying that she loves him, she asks him to kill her, and when he refuses, she then asks him to free her by making love to her again, saying she wants to be with her own kind. She strips her clothes off and walks further into the house, with Yates following suit, grabbing some rope that he uses to tie her to the bed, before taking his own clothes off and having sex with her again. The film then ends with Yates now in a relationship with Alice, but as they're working at a zoo, he tells her that he'll join her for lunch in a few minutes. He then walks over to the big cat exhibit, where Irena is being kept, now forever in her leopard form, and he hand-feeds her a piece of meat before scratching her chin and patting her head, the two of them exchanging glances and Irena letting out one last roar, as David Bowie's theme song begins playing (actually, the movie freezes on a shot of the leopard's face as Bowie sings the first few lines, only for her to then roar when he really starts singing).
The music score was composed by Giorgio Moroder, an Italian songwriter and record producer who's considered a pioneer in the history of Italian disco, meaning that the score is another aspect of this movie that might throw you for a loop when you first hear it. Rather than focusing on the horror elements, it's made up of electronic, synthesizer-based music that emphasizes those mystical, sensual elements that Paul Schrader had in mind when making it. The opening piece has a very distinctive mixture of a tribal, stick-clacking beat mixed in with an electronic, provocative main piece, both of which are accompanied by occasional sections of vocalizing by David Bowie (it's very much a prelude to his theme song, which you hear over the ending credits) and does help to make it feel very mythic. It also helps to emphasize Irena's ultimate fate, as it starts up when Yates is about to have sex with her the second time to release her and you hear at the very end when he's feeding her in her leopard form at the zoo, where it transitions into the song. Another very memorable theme, one which does allude to the dark side of it all, is this very menacing piece that's alluded to when Paul walks up to Irena's bedroom the first time and is really heard full-blast in scenes like when Joe Creight gets his arm ripped off, as it blossoms into this distinctive, rolling type of sound. There are some parts of the score that function almost like dance music, like this cool, rhythmic beat (which, according to Moroder, is the sound of a drum played backwards), along with a synthesizer instrumental backing, that you hear during Irena's dream late in the film, and this driving but still rather low-key bit you hear during a couple of driving sections during the third act (there's a slightly more urgent-sounding cousin to this that you hear when Alice is seen jogging through the park following the dream scene). A couple of pieces sound downright lovely, like this soft electronic melody when Irena is touring New Orleans and this bit on the piano when she and Yates are driving up to his lake house. In fact, there are only a handful of pieces that sound full-on horrific: a truly nightmarish one, accompanied with bizarre, echoing animal-like sounds when Irena stalks through the wilderness; a brief, freakish bit when Billie's mutilated corpse is revealed in the hotel room; and the music when Irena transforms, which gradually builds from a strange, whirring sound (similar to what you hear in the 70's Invasion of the Body Snatchers when the pods start bursting open) to a really creepy bit.
There are a couple of old-timey songs played in the film, like Perry Como's Faraway Places and Jimmy Hughes' Why Not Tonight?, but the one everyone remembers is David Bowie's song, Putting Out the Fire. I've heard that Quentin Tarantino actually caught some flack for putting that song in Inglorious Basterds and I can't understand why, other than it maybe not fitting at all with that movie's 40's setting, as it's truly an awesome song, so I don't blame Tarantino for using it (it also got played in Atomic Blonde and nobody threw a fit about that). It perfectly sums up this movie's notions of overwhelming sensuality, longing, and ultimate tragedy, both with its lyrics (lines like, "See these tears so blue, an ageless heart that can never mend, these tears can never dry," really emphasize that tragic part) and just from the searing, rocking way in which it sounds, accompanied by occasional leopard roars. In fact, the song seems to be sung from Paul's point-of-view, as lines like, "It's been so long," "You wouldn't believe what I've been through," and the oft-repeated, "I've been putting out the fire with gasoline," allude to the hard life he's led, how he's had to placate his sexual needs with death and destruction towards his lovers, and how he's waited for Irena all his life. Nothing else that I can say other than it's a very memorable, catchy song and fits the movie very well.
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