“Sometimes, there is another sound. A panther. It screams like a woman.”

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.