Cat People
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Writer: DeWitt Bodeen
Cast: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph, Jack Holt
Seen on: 2.5.2026

Plot:
Irena (Simone Simon) moved from Serbia to the USA to work as a fashion designer. Soon after her arrival, she meets Oliver (Kent Smith), an engineer who finds himself drawn to her. Irena seems strangely distant, though not disinclined towards Oliver’s advances. But she seems to believe a Serbian folk tale about women that turn into panthers when gripped by passion or jealousy – and she fears for Oliver should she give in to him.

Cat People is an interesting piece of cinema history, though also pretty flawed from today’s perspective. Still, I enjoyed it for the most part.

Cat People reminded me a little of that folk tale with the women who have ribbons tied around their necks. They tell their husbands that they can have everything else, but that they can never untie the ribbon. Of course, curiosity gets the better of the husbands, they untie the ribbon and the women’s heads fall off. They should have respected the boundaries the women set. Cat People is similar. Irena sets a very clear boundary but Oliver thinks that she just needs time and patience to let that boundary drop.

But there is a very different angle at play in Cat People, too, and that is a pretty difficult one from a feminist perspective: Irena basically needs to be asexual because if she ever gave in to her desires, she’d quite literally turn into a jealous, deadly monster, and hoo, boy that is a lot. At least, the film is quite clear in her being a victim of these circumstances and not to blame.

There is also Oliver’s friend, a psychiatrist (Tom Conway), who is supposed to help Irena but instead starts to play a game of his own in the most creepy way possible. He absolutely deserves what’s coming to him. I don’t know if he was intended as such a creep or if the idea of therapy has changed so much, but I think the former.

In any case, the ending is a little depressing, but the film itself is still pretty engaging despite my issues with it. I can see why it has become a classic.

Summarizing: worth watching, at least for horror fans and cinematic history buffs.