October Movie of the Month: Cat People 1942

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > October Movie of the Month: Cat People 1942

gey muckle mowser: Aug 5, 2003; Do you know anything about...
witches?; Buglord

Cat People is in my top 10 all time favorite films. I watch it pretty often and I�ll try to revisit it again this month.

FreudianSlippers posted:

I think this film might have the earliest example ever of a fake out jump scare. To be specific the part where she's being tailed and the bus suddenly pulls up and the hiss of the opening doors sounds like a animalistic growl.

There might be earlier examples but I've not seen them.

Great stuff.

It�s definitely considered the first jump scare of this type, to the point where the term �Lewton Bus� was used to refer to jump scares for a long time.

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gey muckle mowser: Aug 5, 2003; Do you know anything about...
witches?; Buglord

Xposting from the challenge thread, wanted to rewatch this for this thread and also have it count for a bingo square so I listened to the commentary track on the Criterion blu

gey muckle mowser posted:

28. Cat People (1942)
(dir. Jacques Tourneur)
blu-ray
w/ Gregory Mank commentary from the Criterion release
SPOOKY BINGO: Whispers in the Dark

I�ve seen this maybe a dozen times now, it�s easily in my top 10 favorite films. It walks a perfect line between an intelligent noir-ish drama about sexuality and a b- horror movie about a woman who turns into a cat (�a sex melodrama disguised as a horror film�).

This time I watched it with the commentary track from the Criterion blu-ray by film historian Gregory Mank. It�s a bit dry sometimes, but he crams a lot of information into the film�s 73 minute runtime. Lots of stories of old Hollywood and the cast, details about the production, etc. Nothing earth-shattering, but there is some fun trivia. Some of the more interesting parts were about changes between the script and the final film. For example, there was originally a prologue set in Serbia where German forces attack a small village, only to be fought off by a group of cat women, including Irena. Lots of changes due to censorship too, all of which seem extremely silly today.

Mank also pointed out a lot of the recurring visual motifs of the film, most of which I had already picked up on in previous viewings but a couple of which were new to me. One that stood out is when Oliver and Irena first come back to her apartment, the shadows on the walls look like the bars on the panther cage. He also talks about the lesbian undertones of the scene where Irena encounters the cat woman in the restaurant, which I had definitely never considered. Interesting fact about that scene - the woman�s lines (which translate to �my sister� my sister�) were actually spoken by Simone Simon and overdubbed.

Overall I think it is a worthwhile commentary if you�re a fan of the film.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2022 20:59

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Cinema Discusso > October Movie of the Month: Cat People 1942