2 out of 5

Directed by: Paul Schrader

Cat People is a weird movie. …Which the original was as well, but whereas that “weird” felt linked to the film’s identity, Paul Schrader’s very 80s take on the movie seems more unintentionally weird, with some crossover into a goofiness that, I suppose, could wrap around and make the thing campily enjoyable. But overall it feels like a conflicted and confused movie, caught between nodding appreciation to the 1942 version, and studio / era requirements for being an erotic thriller, and whatever ‘man’s temptations’ themes Paul Schrader and writer Alan Ormsby attempted to work into the movie.

A favorable read attributes some of the pacing and tonal oddities to being Cat People 82’s tribute to the original’s offbeat vibe: the movie opens with a surreal, flashback look at the wereperson lore that is kinda sorta the setup for Irena’s (Nastassja Kinski) and her brother Paul’s (Malcolm McDowell) transformations into black leopards; this unrolls with a delightfully moody synth score from Giorgio Moroder, and then segues into present day New Orleans, where the adult siblings reconvene post a childhood orphanaged separation. Irena maintains the ’42 iteration of the character’s naivety, but shifts her innate quirkiness to Paul’s thousand mile stare and obliqueness, then also dumps her foreign ancestry onto Female (Ruby Dee) – pronounced fe-ma-lay – a housemate / mother figure for Paul.

Now, while McDowell’s character – new to the story – does take up a fair amount of runtime, he’s also… rather pointless, existing only as an information delivery system, with the same being true, to even more of an extent, of Female. And because the lore, and the horror elements of the ’42 version, are secondary to eroticism here, the information offered (alongside that dreamy opening scene and one further addition to it) all feels rather unnecessary, bolted on to a movie struggling – ironically, and I don’t think purposefully – with its identity.

Schrader elicits good performances from Kinski and her love interest, zoologist (zing!) Oliver (John Heard). I think the dialogue captures some of the natural and yet unreal patter of Lewton’s film, but then there are also absolutely clunker, nonsensical lines that seem searching / hoping for meaning. On that same wavelength, while the visuals often illustrate the noir sensibilities of ’42, despite having some potentially rich twists to the setting – New Orleans; Oliver’s job means we can spend more time in the zoo – the movie generally has no sense of place or geography, every room feeling part of the same, formless-less house.

I can imagine this landing better at the time, letting the brand value of Schrader convince a viewer there’s artisticness to its confused construction; certainly as a bit of erotica, there’s a fair amount of flesh. Besides that, this film doesn’t offer much on its own terms, or as a remake.