Cat People (1982/HD-DVD)

 

Picture: B     Sound: C+     Extras: B-     Film: B

 

 

Val Lewton’s 1942 production of Cat People is a classic and there was a time that Hollywood was very careful about remaking anything.  Now, especially with Horror films, they are remaking anything that they can get their hands on and ruining the material often.  Back in 1982 however, Universal Pictures decided to try and update the RKO classic and carefully assembled the best possible group to pull it off.

 

They hired then-hot writer/director Paul Schrader (coming off of American Gigolo) and then cutting-edge Horror scribe Alan Ormsby (Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, Deranged, Deathdream) to dig deeper into the meaning of the original film.  The result was one of those increasingly rare remakes worthy of the original, a film a quarter century later that remains as disturbing and creepy as anything since.

 

Nastassja Kinski stars as Irena, a young lady finding her way in the world, but dealing with her brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell) and his often strange behavior.  He is hiding something and she is not yet aware of what, but the repressed is about to spring forward both figuratively and literally, leaving a steady stream of carnage like nothing anyone has seen before.

 

That includes the detectives (Frankie Faison from The Silence Of The Lambs & Manhunter, Ron Diamond) wondering why bodies are turning up torn to shreds and mutilated.  The audience is privy to an opening sequence set in the past of some strange civilization built around wild black panther-type creatures, but something else is going on.

 

As the film moves on, we learn Paul is aware of a family legacy Irena is clueless about and has no written record.  Soon however, that will all end and not very easily.  I was surprised and impressed how mature, smart and thought out this film was and had not seen it in a long time.  This HD-DVD brought back memories of seeing it in its original 35mm release and though it is not perfect, may be one of the more underrated back catalog releases Universal has and it is great to see them issuing it in HD like this.

 

Also impressive is the rest of the supporting cast, including Ed Begley Jr., Ruby Dee, John Larroquette, Scott Paulin, Ray Wise and Marco St. John.  Unfortunately, it would be decades before Schrader made a big Hollywood film and it was by taking over John Frankenheimer’s Exorcist prequel, but was a doomed project taken out of his hands before he could finish it for his late friend who died as it was gearing up.

 

McDowell is back in fine acting form after the debacle of Caligula, turning in here another bad guy role, but with creepy twists that remains among his best work ever.  With all the talk of his work in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, it is funny how this has become so forgotten.  Kinski was one of the sexiest women around at the time and though her star should have risen higher, this is some of her best work.  Both actors take some risks which still stand out strongly today.

 

If you have never seen this before, you’ll want to catch it, especially if you want to see (along with John Carpenter’s The Thing and An American Werewolf In London, both also on HD-DVD from Universal) how far complex Horror filmmaking had gone in the early 1980s before the filmmaking became silly and even pandering.  If the original Cat People is a classic, the sequel (like Carpenter’s The Thing) is at least a minor classic.  Now you can see for yourself.

 

 

The 1080p VC-1 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image was shot by Schrader’s Director Of Photography at the time, John Bailey.  It remains some of his best, most atmospheric, most impressive work to date in a career that began in 1972.  Though the approach to showing the past looks a bit dated, the images further the narrative very effectively in the best tradition of the genre.  As compared to John Alcott’s work on The Shining, it holds up well indeed.  However, some softness and slight edge enhancement gets in the way, but this has enough highlights to overcome the flaws.

 

The film was originally issued in Dolby’s old analog A-type surround sound, but the sound has been upgraded to Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1, with both being about the same as the original sound source is weak and even sounds second generation from the dialogue to Giorgio Moroder’s score.  This also features the “Putting Out The Fire” theme song by David Bowie in its earlier, more electronic version versus the harder Rock remake a few years later.  That is a little disappointing, but it is better than monophonic sound.  Too bad someone did not upgrade the whole sound mix.  Where are the dialogue stems?

 

Extras are brought over from the DVD including a Laurent Bouzereau’s 2002 documentary Cat People: An Intimate Portrait By Paul Schrader running 25 minutes, matte paintings from the film, production photographs, On The Set with Schrader piece, Robert Wise on the Lewton and the production of the original film, a look at Special Makeup Effects by Tom Burton and another very good audio commentary track by Schrader.

 

This has an R-rating, a hard R at that and is long overdue for rediscovery.  Catch it on HD-DVD ASAP.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo