Rish Outfield's reviews
There are dog people and there are cat people. I've always heard that this remake was vastly inferior to the 1942 original, but as I've never seen the original, I thought this was pretty good.
A young woman (Natassia Kinski), apparently the last of an ancient half-panther/half-human race, comes to live with her weirdo brother (Malcolm McDowell) in the city. She finds herself drawn to the zoo and the big cat cages, but her terrible secret (unknown even to her) comes to light when she falls in love with John Heard, a (surprisingly young and virile) zoo employee.
I think if 1989 was Year of the Batman, then 1981 had to have been the Year of the Werewolf. I realize that Cat People doesn't deal with werewolves per se, but it's pretty darn close.
Jerry Bruckheimer produced this slick 80's remake of the 40's cult classic and it had a cool 80's feel, from its David Bowie main theme to the basic, moody, not-as-the-world-exists-today-somehow atmosphere of the film.
A bit slow-moving, but not too slow, it wasn't an entirely fun movie, as it dealt with a somber and somehow tragic subject matter, but it was well made, stylistic, and the cast was great. Beautiful Kinski manages to make even her godawful unisex haircut look sexy. Plus, she's playing a virgin, and amazingly, she pulls it off. Malcolm McDowell, her mysterious brother, described the quandary best when he said, "Ours is an incestuous race. We can only mate with our own." I don't know if that's relevant in any way other than in this movie, but I wrote it down anyway. It was neat to see future familiar faces like the aforementioned Heard, Annette O'Toole, Ed Beagley Jr., and John Larroquette. But do any of them get a Future Celebrity skull? Why not? Hmm.
There was some very intense violence involving panther attacks. For example, one guy (Beagley) was de-armed rather graphically. Also, there was a truly sickening part where they eat their. . .afterbirth, for lack of a better word. Ick. It had LOTS of nudity, we're talkin' every female character here. But the cat people curse is, sex comes with a price. Freddy Krueger could've told them that.
Lastly, I noticed that Empire Strikes Back gum was being sold in the zoo gift shop for twenty-five cents a pack. The 80's were a great, great time.
I'd Recommend It To: The curious.