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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Cat People (1982)

Cat People (1982)

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Released 11-Jun-2003

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Thriller Audio Commentary-director Paul Schrader
Interviews-Crew-on-set interview with director Paul Schrader
Featurette-an intimate portrait by Paul Schrader
Gallery-stills
Featurette-special makeup effects
Featurette-visual effects
Interviews-Crew-Robert Wise on Val Lewton
Rating Rated R
Year Of Production 1982
Running Time 113:12
RSDL / Flipper RSDL (78:00) Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 2,4 Directed By Paul Schrader
Studio
Distributor

Universal Pictures Home Video
Starring Nastassja Kinski
Malcolm McDowell
John Heard
Annette O'Toole
Ruby Dee
Ed Begley, Jr.
Case Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI $34.95 Music Giorgio Moroder
David Bowie


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English
Arabic
Czech
Greek
Hungarian
Turkish
Romanian
English Audio Commentary
Arabic Audio Commentary
Czech Audio Commentary
Greek Audio Commentary
Hungarian Audio Commentary
Turkish Audio Commentary
Romanian Audio Commentary
Smoking Yes
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    This film made a deep impression on me when I saw it in the cinema, back in the early 80s. I remember the opening sequence, with the blowing sand, and the bass-heavy theme. I remember the tantalizing mix of the erotic and the horrifying, seasoned with a hint of impossible romance. I guess I was at the perfect age to be impressed by all of that.

    Revisiting the film twenty years later, a lot of it still holds up. Most of the effects still work, which is an achievement, considering that this film predates the use of CGI — all these effects were achieved in the old ways, with make-up, appliances, and old-fashioned chemical photography. If this film were made today, it could do so much more.

    What's the story? It's a tale of a young woman, Irena Gallier (Nastassia Kinski, who now uses the original spelling Nastassja), who has just arrived in New Orleans to meet her brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell). They were separated as children (she was 4) after their parents died in mysterious circumstances. Irena is happy to see her brother, but a little wary, too. That wariness proves justified, as she finds his intentions seem other than brotherly.

    Meanwhile, the curator of the New Orleans Zoo is called in when a black leopard is found in a brothel (dare I call it a cathouse? No? OK). He darts the leopard with a tranquilizer pistol, and they haul it back to the zoo. The leopard has not been reported missing, so they are in something of a quandary to explain its presence in New Orleans. After a horrifying incident, the cat disappears.

    Meanwhile, Irena has met the curator, Oliver (John Heard), and romance stirs between them. Irena is somewhat wary here, too, for she has never been with a man. But she likes him, and gets to know him better as she works at the zoo (in the gift shop). It's an old-fashioned zoo, with bored-looking animals in tiny brick, concrete and steel enclosures.

    It takes some time to develop, but the connection between the cats and the Galliers emerges. It's a complex story, and a supernatural one...

    Of all animals, the black panther is possibly the best choice for a film that is both erotic and horrifying. The sensual grace of a big black cat is quite something (looked at from a distance, or behind bars!), but in any close quarters contact, a human stands no chance against such a combination of strength and natural weaponry. There's even the interesting question as to whether the implied threat adds to the erotic frisson.

    It was interesting to learn that they used two kinds of big cats in making this film. They did have some real leopards (a panther is usually a black leopard — panthera pardus — it's a not uncommon colour variant), but leopards are nocturnal, and they live in trees. That makes them very difficult, or next to impossible, to train. So they used American mountain lions (also known as cougars or pumas — felis concolor), which are diurnal, and trainable, for any scene requiring interaction with people, or any kind of trained behaviour. They had to dye the mountain lions black (that's one very brave hairdresser!). I had noticed a difference in the cats, but I hadn't known why. One of the tip-offs as to which breed is involved is the ears: a leopard's ears are finer, and somewhat more pointy; a mountain lion's are somewhat rounder and furrier.

    One thing disturbed me. You may note, if you look for these things, that the customary American Humane Society statement is not present. It may well be that this is because they weren't involved in films back then, but the commentary reveals that some of the leopards were provoked into action by air being blown into the room they were in through the skirting, producing high pitched whistling, and one of the leopards was so upset it smashed into the bars, cracked its skull, and died. The director passes this off as a bit of trivia. I'm not sure if I find his attitude, or the way they treated the animals, more disturbing. It seems clear that this film might have benefited from some supervision from the American Humane Society...

    As you might expect for a film termed an erotic horror, there's some nudity. It's equal opportunity, though, because we get almost as much nudity from Malcolm McDowell as from Nastassia Kinski. It's not as if you'd be worried about showing this film to children because of the nudity, though — you should be much more worried about the horror aspect. It's amusing, to me, that the part of the film that raised the most questions was the penultimate scene, because of its (sort-of) bondage theme — that certainly didn't strike me when I saw it.

    Nastassia Kinski was a superb choice. She is very believable as the innocent young woman at the start of the film, and she is convincing in the more confident (and sexy) role at the end. It's easy to see why Paul Schrader felt no one else could play the role.

    All up, this film still works today. I'd give a lot of the credit to the actors, most particularly Nastassia Kinski but also Malcolm McDowell. They really sell the idea that they are people with cat-like qualities. If you're interested in a film that is both horror and erotic, fantasy with a little romance, then you might like this one. Do be warned that some of the horror is fairly graphic, though.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    This movie is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, which is the intended ratio. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    This film is rather clear, and reasonably sharp, with no trace of edge enhancement. Shadow detail is limited, but  adequate to telling the story — the limited shadow detail may well be deliberate, adding to the tension because we can't see into the shadows. There are numerous dark scenes, but no low-level noise in them, which is good. There's some grain a lot of the time, but it's never troublesome.

    Colour is well-rendered. The production design carefully restricts the use of bright colours, but when they appear, they look good. There are no colour-related artefacts, except that a few scenes feature somewhat over-hot whites (most notably 108:11, which the director mentions in the commentary as a happy accident — they liked it and left it in).

    There are more than a few film artefacts (the film is over twenty years old, after all), but they are all tiny. This film has been cared for well.

    There are several moments of brief wobble (such as 30:29, 54:36, and 70:08)  — some of these may be camera wobble (there was some hand-held work), but some are telecine wobble.

    There is surprisingly little aliasing, considering the prevalence of bars. There's no serious moir้ (just a touch here and there), and no MPEG artefacts. There's the occasional bit of shimmer on a small part of the image, but it's well controlled.

    There are subtitles in seven languages, including English. I watched all of the English subtitles. They are well-timed to the dialogue, and easy to read. There are the usual small abbreviations, but nothing that harms the sense of the film..

    The disc is single-sided (with a nice picture label), dual layered, formatted RSDL. The layer change is at 78:00, but it's hard to spot because it falls in the middle of a naturally static shot.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    This disc has two audio tracks: the soundtrack in English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384kbps), and the commentary in English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192kbps) not surround-encoded. I listened to both tracks in their entirety.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand. There are no audio sync problems.

    The Giorgio Moroder score, while very 80s, is very well-suited to the film. The theme song, written and performed by David Bowie, is very apt — I really love the imagery of "putting out fires with gasoline".

    The soundtrack is rendered as 5.1, but you could be forgiven for wondering why. The surrounds are essentially unused for almost the entire film, although some score leaks into them at times — they see a bit of use in a few key scenes. The subwoofer does get used, mostly as the lowest register of the music and supporting the growls and roars.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

Menu

    The menu is static and silent, but easy to navigate.

Audio Commentary — Director Paul Schrader

    Paul Schrader is equivocal about this film. That's understandable, because it had a dramatic impact on his life. He's not too forthcoming about it, but one gathers that it destroyed his marriage and put his career on hold for some years. This was not because of the film itself, but rather his relationship with Nastassia Kinski. He also mentions that this film was in production when John Belushi died — he considers that death as marking the end of the old Hollywood attitude towards drugs.

    The commentary points out all manner of interesting details about the making of the film, and is quite a decent listen. He is quite open about how much simpler it would have been to make this film today, with CGI morphing. At the same time, I think he's proud of what they managed to achieve, given the limited resources of the day. He certainly doesn't sound like he wants to do a Spielberg on the film, and replace all the effects.

    He confesses that there are a number of shots in the film that are deliberately included to heighten the mystery — you are not supposed to understand them. It is nice to see a director admit that. And he also points out a couple of fake-out scenes.

    It's nice to note that this commentary is subtitled in all the supported languages, so everyone can appreciate it.

Featurette — on-set interview with Paul Schrader (10:22)

    Filmed during the making of the film, this is quite poor quality: hissy sound, rotten video, rife with artefacts. Paul Schrader sounds a bit drunk, or possibly impaired by unprescribed pharmaceuticals (he alludes to this in the commentary). He makes the interesting point that this is the first film he had directed where he didn't write the script.

Featurette — an intimate portrait with Paul Schrader (25:24)

    This was filmed in November 2000, and features a much more articulate Paul Schrader. He talks about how he set out to make a horror film, and ended up with an erotic fantasy with horror overtones. One of the things he mentions is that he wishes they'd changed the name of the film. He feels that this film suffers from comparison with the 1942 film of the same name.

Theatrical Trailer (2:17)

    A fairly ordinary trailer.

Gallery — Stills (6:47)

    A free-running montage, with the image changing every 5 or 6 seconds.

Featurette — special makeup effects (11:15)

    A decent length featurette discussing the special effects makeup they used. Quite interesting.

Featurette — visual effects: before and after (3:11)

    This shows what some of the shots looked like, before and after the blue-screen compositing was done.

Interview — Robert Wise on Val Lewton (3:34)

    A brief interview with the famous film-maker Robert Wise, talking about the director of  the original (1942) film The Cat People. He also mentions working with Val Lewton on the sequel to that film, called Curse of the Cat People.

Censorship

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    There have been two versions of this movie released on DVD in Region 1. I have a copy of the older, discontinued, Image version. It had a transfer that was not very good, was bereft of extras, and in a snapper case. That version has been replaced by one from Universal which has the same extras as this disc, and a better transfer than the original Region1 release, in an Amaray case. The only difference I can see listed between that disc and this one (apart from the obvious NTSC versus PAL differences) is that the R1 has only a 2.0 soundtrack.

    While the R4 isn't a brilliant transfer, it is good enough, and it does have the 5.1 sound. I'd suggest that this R4 disc is about the best version you'll get.

Summary

    Cat People is an interesting film, combining horror with erotic, with a nice touch of the impossible romance. It is presented reasonably well on DVD.

    The video quality is rather good, considering the age of the film and the quality of the source material.

    The audio quality is good, with the music coming across very well.

    The extras are surprisingly full for a 20 year old film, and give more insight than usual into what was going on.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Tony Rogers (bio-degrading: making a fool of oneself in a bio...)
Monday, July 07, 2003
Review Equipment
DVDPioneer DV-S733A, using Component output
DisplaySony VPH-G70 CRT Projector, QuadScan Elite scaler (Tripler), ScreenTechnics 110. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationDenon AVC-A1SE
SpeakersFront Left, Centre, Right: Krix Euphonix; Rears: Krix KDX-M; Subwoofer: Krix Seismix 5

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