Men! Is your new wife distant, turning impatient and even hysterical any time
you so much as make to kiss her on the forehead? You may want to consider the
possibility that she is one of an ancient race of cat people, who turn both
feline and deadly after ... more sexual activity! And there, in a nutshell, is the
premise of this brilliant film, and as you can imagine, producer Val Lewton,
writer DeWitt Bodeen and director Jacques Tourneur had to do an awful lot of
insinuating to even make that premise felt back in 1942. But felt it is, and
even more so when the film's cat woman, a decidedly confounded Simone Simon, begins to resent the
frustrations that hubby Kent Smith has been confiding of to
good girl Jane Randolph. The scenes in which
Randolph is stalked by an aggrieved she-cat helped redefine screen suspense and
surprise, and still work -- and influence contemporary filmmakers -- today.
