Cat People (Paul Schrader, 1982)

More a variation on similar themes than a straightforward remake of Jacques Tourneur's 1942 classic, Paul Schrader's take on Cat People doesn't quite work as a horror film or a coherent artistic statement, but I like movies for a lot of different reasons and artistic coherence is near the bottom of the list. Schrader's Cat People is a deranged, fascinating, visually exciting, horny, early '80s time capsule that is both fascinated with and terrified by sex. Maybe Schrader was working out some inner conflict between his strict Calvinist upbringing in suburban Michigan (he didn't see his first movie until age 18) and his adult exploits in the '70s and '80s New York and Los Angeles film scenes. Yeah, that's some armchair psychologizing, but he really did have an odd childhood and adolescence compared to most of his movie-brat filmmaker peers.

Keeping the idea of an ancient lineage of people who shapeshift into big cats when sexually aroused and the ensuing doomed romance with a non-cat person (people people??) and repeating a few major scenes, 1982's Cat People otherwise veers into different narrative directions. The original film was shot in a Hollywood studio and set in New York City, but this version takes place on location in New Orleans. Schrader does a good job of retaining the mystery, danger, character, and atmosphere of the actual city and stylizing it just enough to match the film's tone without doing the "we're in New Orleans Mardi Gras voodoo Cajun zydeco Bourbon Street I guar-on-tee" shtick of so many Hollywood takes on the city. (For just one example, everyone in The Big Easy has a Cajun accent even though that particular accent is extremely rare in New Orleans. Cajuns live in a different part of Louisiana, Hollywood dorks.) This version also gives the main character a brother she's never met before, with their belated union the jumping-off point for everything else in the story.

Those siblings are played by the appropriately feline-esque actors Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell, who both do a great job embodying a hybrid cat/human physicality (in very different ways). Irena (Kinski), raised in foster homes in Canada, is met at the New Orleans airport by her brother Paul (McDowell). The siblings were separated when their parents committed suicide shortly after Irena's birth. She moves in with Paul and his housekeeper Female (pronounced fuh-mahl-ay) (why?) (I mean, they tell you why, but why?) played by Ruby Dee. They're both happy to see her but otherwise very intense and a little creepy, and Paul is disturbingly touchy-feely.

Strangely enough, Paul disappears shortly after Irena moves in, not-so-coincidentally around the same time a panther mauls a sex worker (played by cult movie veteran Lynn Lowry) in a seedy hotel and is captured by a team from the New Orleans Zoo, including curator Oliver (John Heard), Alice (Annette O'Toole), and Joe (Ed Begley Jr.). Irena feels drawn to the zoo and takes her sketch pad with her, drawing the panther. Oliver sees her out there, even though the zoo closed a few hours ago, he tries to find out what the hell she's doing, they get to talking, they fall in love, and oh shit, she's a cat person and he's a person person. This relationship doesn't sit right with Paul, who has (not so) mysteriously reappeared after the panther disappears from the zoo. He tells Irena she'll kill Oliver if she bones him and that she can only get her bone on with Paul incestuously because they're damn panther-people and their parents were also incestuous brother-sister panther-people. Irena thinks this whole thing sucks, though she's starting to feel the panther vibes within.What to do?

Paul Schrader is a bit of an odd fit for the genre material even though he usually deals with dark subject matter and psychologically tormented characters, and it's weird seeing a Schrader film with American Werewolf in London/Howling-style transformation scenes, goo, blood, and gore. (I have not seen his other two detours into supernatural horror, the Exorcist prequel Dominion and the made-for-HBO Witch Hunt.) There's a bit of an awkwardness to the horror, but that awkwardness actually works in the context of the film. Irena as a character is hesitant, confused, unsure of herself, and outside of her comfort zone, and so is Schrader. It gives the film an additional layer of tension.

Though Schrader did some uncredited rewrites on the script, Cat People is one of those oddball Schrader-directed films that didn't originate as a Schrader screenplay. The remake's writer, Alan Ormsby, wrote and co-directed the Ed Gein-inspired cult horror Deranged and has a wild and kooky résumé as screenwriter, including work on Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, Deathdream, The Little Dragons, My Bodyguard, Porky's II: The Next Day, The Substitute, Disney's Mulan, and the TV show Nash Bridges. I'm curious which parts of the shooting script were Ormsby's and which were Schrader's.

Whatever the case, I like Cat People's uneasy mixture of horror, European art film, comedy, myth, romance, erotic thriller, drama, and morality tale modes, and the Giorgio Moroder score (and David Bowie's closing theme), lighting, mythological prologue, and fantasy and dream sequences give the movie a particularly first-half-of-the-'80s electro-psychedelia vibe. (Off the top of my head, I'd include Michael Mann's Thief, The Keep, and Manhunter, Ken Russell's Altered States, William Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Slava Tsukerman's Liquid Sky, and Michael Wadleigh's Wolfen in this microgenre I may have just invented. Need to flesh this out more.)

Schrader fills the movie with cult cameos (the aforementioned Lowry, Berry Berenson, Frankie Faison, Ray Wise, John Larroquette, local DJ The Black Pope), nonprofessional locals, and oddball extras, sometimes looking straight at the camera in the margins of the frame, giving the movie so much added flavor and texture. Schrader also avoids perfunctory visuals, with nearly every shot and image a memorable one. He's not just telling a story, he's creating and maintaining an atmosphere. Cat People is a far from perfect movie and may be a little creepy if you dwell on the ending too much, but it's so damn weird and interesting in ways that current movies really aren't. I enjoyed rewatching it for the first time in more than 20 years.