'40s Horror Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

I always figured that Cat People (1942, two stars total) was a cheap, female version of The Wolf Man (released the year before). Although the lead character does transform into an animal, it's actually a romance story gone horribly wrong. Boy meets girl, they fall in love and get married, and then never consummate their marriage. It's about repressed sexuality, depression and paranoia. There's some good screaming in the pool scene, but overall the acting's not up to par with the themes. Producer Val Lewton made nine horror movies at RKO Pictures in the '40s and people's biggest complaint about all of them seems to be with the acting. And yet they've passed the test of time. Some were already based on classic literature, and others have had contemporary and unnecessary remakes. It just goes to show the material's so much bigger than the budgets they had to work with. As the remakes have shown, having a bigger budget is irrelevant.

The Curse of the Cat People (two stars and a half stars total) Ignore the lame title. Forget about the first movie. This sequel (1944) of sorts may feature the same actors playing the same characters, but the story jumps forward a decade, the setting's changed and most importantly, there's a different director. This is the the debut of Robert Wise (a name you might recognize from The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, The Haunting, The Sound of Music or Star Trek: The Motion Picture). The scandal of infidelity and divorce are gone but new family dysfunction has parents and their children dealing with the same anger and jealousy as the Cat People. That is The Curse, nothing more, nothing less. If that sounds more like drama than horror to you, you're right. This is a psychological drama, but with better thrills and chills than most horror movies. A scary movie's always scarier with a child in the lead. This one shows how having an imaginary friend can be life-threatening. What it showed me personally is how good shadows, smoke and snowfall look in black and white.