I rented it by accident. I meant to get the Val Lewton/Jacques Torneur 1942 Cat People.
This is not a great movie. It fails narratively, since there's no real sympathy for the blank Natasha Kinski, Irena, the main character who is discovering her deep secret, that she, like her brother and her parents before her, becomes a leopard when she gets sexually arroused. Even the director, Paul Schrader, has a hard time saying what the film is about. In the extras, there's an on set interview with him, in which he resists reducing the film to it's narrative, and then goes on to say that it's about myth and subconscious desires. This means that the film isn't traditionally engaging as entertainment, and it fails in exciting in a sexual or horror style as well. I didn't find it exciting, seductive or intellectually stimulating. He further can't really explain how he and Natasha created her character, which is because he didn't really create any engaging characters. In fact, Schraeder comes off as a creepy, over-intellectualized jack ass with no emotions or honest feelings. That's not to say that there aren't interesting and appealing aspects to the film.
The soundtrack is by Giorgio Moroder. It's awesome. And the theme song is sung by David Bowie, "Putting out a fire with gasoline". The cast includes Malcolm McDowell as Irena's murdering, incestuous brother; John Laroquette, Ruby Dee(A Raisin in the Sun), Frankie Faison (playing another cop) and Ed Bagely Jr in small but delightful roles.
The intro scenes involving the primal historical sacrifices are interesting in that they expose a pre-adolescent boy sexual fantasy, much like Conan the Barbarian. The theme of the movie is sexual imagination, according to the director, and it shows a fairly juvenile sexuality. But that can be fun sometimes. It's an amusing conceit that someone's sexuality can turn them into a murderous beast. But with the inclusion of the brother, it makes it less about feminine sexuality, and more about sexuality in general, and then it becomes too broad to really be all that exciting or engaging.
So blah. It had some cool spots, but I could have watched Ray on UPN for the second time, and been better off. But then again, there's alot of nudity in Cat People, and a very cool scene in the forest at night that's shot in black and white and colored in post. So it's got some neat stuff, but you don't need to watch the whole thing, and it feels like it could have ended three times over.
