Horror Movies To Watch: Cat People 1942 And Cat People 1982.
“Sometimes, there is another sound. A panther. It screams like a woman.”
It's That Time Of Year Again...With Some Horror Movies To Watch …
Binge-Watchers Podcast Is About To Deliver A Series Of Double Features, We Decided To Take A Look At Horror Movies And Their Horrific Remakes. Or Maybe We Will Discover The Remakes Are More Deadly Than The Originals - Stay Tuned!!!
Here are some Home Video Headlines:
Amc Fearfest: Stand Outs Include All The Halloween Movies Set In Original Continuity, Final Destination Series, And The Classics Like Christine, Carrie, The Fly, The Crazies, And 13 Ghosts.
Huluween Will Have Stuff Like Martyrs And All 3 Blades.
Peacock With Peacoctober Has Almost Everything. All The Nightmare On Elm Streets. All The Friday The 13ths, The Phantasm Series, All The Child’s Plays, All The Elvira’s, All The Predators, All The Psychos, And Even Cat People 1982.
Tonight’s Feature Presentation Is A Double Feature Review And Conversation About Cat People 1942 And Cat People 1982.
1942 - Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), a New York City--based fashion designer who hails from Serbia, begins a romance with marine engineer Oliver Reed (Kent Smith). After the couple gets married, Oliver becomes concerned about Irena's notion that she is cursed and may transform into a large cat in the heat of passion. Confiding in his beautiful assistant, Alice Moore (Jane Randolph), about his marital issues, Oliver unwittingly triggers Irena's curse, with tragic results.
1982 - In this sensual and violent horror tale, Irena (Nastassia Kinski) has a dark family secret, one that resurfaces dramatically when she reconnects with her estranged brother, Paul (Malcolm McDowell). Living with her sibling in New Orleans, Irena finds herself enamored with zoologist Oliver Yates (John Heard), even as her brother makes his own advances toward her. It's not long before the dark and dangerous curse of the clan rears its feline head.
There’s Really No Way To Spoil These Movies Because The Title Tells You Exactly What It Is About: They Are Cat People.
Cat People Movie Facts:
The original part of a string of lower budgeted films that RKO Pictures put into production to try to recoup costs from Citizen Kane which was a financial bomb for the studio. It was budgeted at $125,000 but eventually costing about
$142,000. While the gross is disputed it did make roughly $1 million in profit.
Producer Val Lewton was genuinely scared of cats due to Russian Folklore where he is originally from.
The cinematographer from the remake, John Bailey, stated that the pool scene in the remake is nearly identical to the original because they couldn’t do it any better.
Most of the Black Leopards in the movie were actually cougars with black dyed hair because Leopards are untrainable.
Director Paul Schrader states he never considered it to be a remake with him only adding one homage scene with Irena and Alice talking at the bar with a woman approaching them. However there are a number of other connections including the aforementioned pool scene, the main character being named Irena and the bus coming out of seemingly nowhere for a jump scare.
Producer Wilbur Stark bought the rights to the RKO Library and intended to make a series of horror remakes but the box office failure of this and The Thing killed any future plans. This was made in the middle of a string of remakes of classic horror movies including The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fly and Nosferatu the Vampyre.
We all agree the pool scare sequence is one of our favorite moments from both films, and shockingly all 3 of us had more to say about the original.
Our staff picks this week include: Maniac Cop, I Walked With A Zombie, and Ted Lasso.
