The Scariest Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: Halloween Weekend Repertory Cinema Picks
Cat People (1942)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Cat People still somehow manages to escape full canonization all these decades later. We still treat it like a happy pile of gimmicks, accidents and skullduggery, secretly stitched together while studio heads were distracted. Tourneur’s entire career is foregrounded here—the past always digging its claws into the future and dragging ragged heroes away like mice when it sees fit. Simone Simon, the feline femme fatale, would remain a mystery to studios, who would cast her as agents of chaos and then forget her. Val Lewton (one of the greatest activist producers and wunderkinds Hollywood ever produced) and his stylistic brio are still used as shorthand to this day, even if no one gets the difference between showing and telling. In short this little miracle is still taken for granted. This is a mistake. Its insouciant sexuality is still titanic. Its frankness is as scary as it is vital and engrossing. It’s the first American horror movie about ordinary people giving into temptation with complete awareness and agency. An architect marries an aspiring artist with a deep seated fear that her libido will turn her into a jungle cat. She withdraws, he seeks companionship with his best friend. She finds out and decides to unleash the panther lurking in her soul, pacing like the echo of an old folk song, reminding her of the homeland she, like Lewton and Tourneur, left behind. Cat People stills holds its own as it nears its 75th birthday, and that is no accident. Scout Tafoya (October 29, 6:40pm at BAM’s “13 Cats”)
