Sadly Over-hyped

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The sixth of producer Val Lewton's memorable series of psychological horror films made at RKO in the 1940s, The Curse of the Cat People is pretty controversial. It's a sequel to Cat People, Lewton's first RKO film and one that is rightfully considered a classic today. However, unlike Cat People, it's not a horror film. It has some scary parts, for sure, and the entire film has a haunted, dreamlike atmosphere about it. Rather than being a horror film, though, this is a film about imagination and childhood fantasy.The film takes place many years after the events of Cat People. Oliver Reed and Alice Moore (Kent Smith, Jane Randolph) from the first film are now married and have a young daughter named Amy (Ann Carter). Amy is a lonely child who has trouble making friends and retreats into daydreams frequently. Amy wishes very hard for a friend and later, after she finds a photo of Oliver's first wife Irena (the always enchanting Simone Simon), her wish is answered. Irena's ghost appears to Amy and becomes her friend, just as her relationship with her father is growing more strained. There's also a subplot about an aging actress Amy meets whose failing mind has caused her to believe her daughter (Elizabeth Russell) is someone else. This nicely ties in with the main plot in the end.The Lewtonian approach of planting ambiguity within the mind of the viewer is still alive in this sequel. Much in the same way viewers were left to wonder throughout Cat People if Irena really was what she thought she was or if it was all in her head, in this film viewers are left to wonder if the ghostly visits of Irena are real or all products of the little girl's imagination.Some defenders of the film seem to feel the need to downplay this film's status as a sequel in order to appease the critics, the vast majority of which seem to hate the film based solely on what it isn't as opposed to what it is. Statements like "it's a sequel in name only" and "pretend it's not a sequel and you'll enjoy it more" show up quite often in favorable reviews. Yes, originally they envisioned this story as something separate and the studio forced them to make it into a sequel. But we aren't watching that film that was never made. We're watching the one that was. And the one that was made is a sequel. It features the same characters with the same actors with many references to the first film. In fact, elements of the first film are a prominent part of this one. The whole reason Oliver is so upset about Amy's make-believe is because he believes she will turn out like Irena did. Take away the connection to Cat People and the movie is less enjoyable in many ways. Yes, the story is such that you do not need to have seen the first film in order to understand this one. That's a good thing but it's important to add that having seen the first film does add an extra something to the experience. It's a beautiful, lyrical, magical film that is so much more than most sequels ever even try to be. I would recommend it to everybody.

"The Curse of the Cat People" is, officially, a sequel to "Cat People" from two years earlier. The two films had the same producer, Val Lewton, and the same scriptwriter, DeWitt Bodeen, although they had different directors. (Robert Wise, later to become famous for films like "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music", earned his first directing credit by completing the film after the original director, Gunther von Fritsch, was sacked for working too slowly). They starred the same three actors, Kent Smith, Simone Simon and Jane Randolph, in the same roles. And yet the two films are quite different in tone and style, so different that they could be described as belonging to separate genres. "Cat People" is a horror movie, albeit far more subtle and restrained than many films which go by that description today, whereas "The Curse of the Cat People" can best be described as a supernatural fantasy. The action takes place several years after the events narrated in "Cat People". That film's hero Oliver Reed- a name which was later to be made famous by an actor- is now married to Alice, and they have a six-year- old daughter, Amy. Amy is a strange child, intelligent and imaginative but shy, withdrawn and introverted, and her parents, especially Oliver, are worried because she spends so much time daydreaming and she finds it difficult to make friends at school. Oliver's worries are rooted in his sad memories of his first wife Irena who he believes went mad because of an over-active imagination, culminating in her suicide. (Those who have seen "Cat People" will realise that the reasons for Irena's death were more complex than that, but Oliver has never accepted the truth about his first wife).Amy does, however, make two friends. One is Julia Farren, an elderly, reclusive and half-mad former actress who lives in a big house in the village with only her daughter Barbara for company. Julia, however, is under the delusion that Barbara died many years ago and that the woman living with her is an impostor pretending to be her daughter. The strain of caring for her impossible mother is slowly driving Barbara mad herself, and she conceives an irrational hatred of young Amy. Amy's other friend is none other than the deceased Irena, who appears to her as a ghost. Some have interpreted the ghostly Irena as a mere figment of Amy's imagination, although I don't think that this interpretation really works. Supernatural fantasies, often involving ghosts, were popular in the forties; examples include (from America) "The Ghost and Mrs Muir", "Portrait of Jennie", "I Married a Witch", "It's a Wonderful Life" and (from Britain) "Blithe Spirit" and "A Matter of Life and Death". Perhaps the war had had the effect of turning people's thoughts towards the afterlife. "The Curse of the Cat People" is another film in this tradition, and I think that we are supposed to accept that Irena really has returned from the grave to watch over the daughter of her one-time husband. Lewton, in fact, did not like the film's title and wanted to change it to "Amy and Her Friend" to emphasise the differences in tone between this film and its predecessor. The studio (RKO), however, insisted on keeping the phrase "cat people" in the title to cash in on the success of the previous film. Their marketing strategy, using slogans like "The Beast Woman Stalks the Night Anew", also suggested, wrongly, that this was a horror film like the first. Yet in some ways their choice of title was an appropriate one. Irena, a sinister, threatening character in the earlier film, here becomes a benevolent one, the implication being that the curse which afflicted her in life has been lifted in death and that she now has the chance to atone for the evil she once caused by acting as Amy's guardian spirit. Simone Simon, so effective as the menacing, feline Irena of the first film, has to call on very different acting skills here. The lovely Simone, despite her beauty and obvious talent, never really became a big-name star, possibly because she never seemed able to decide whether she was happier working in America or in her native France. It is perhaps significant that the name Irena, a variant of Irene, derives from "eirene", the Greek for "peace". The film ends on a note of serenity and reconciliation with the breach between Amy and her parents healed through Irena's agency. Despite its low budget and the change of directors halfway through, "The Curse of the Cat People" achieves the rare feat, for a sequel, of being not only as good as the original film but also completely different from it. 8/10

A semi-sort of sequel to CAT PEOPLE, Val Lewton's THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE is slow and irrelevant even by his standards. It stars three of the actors from the original movie in a kind of twee children's fantasy that has little to nothing to do with the first film's plot.The truth is that there's no curse in the film and no cat people either, the title was just added to cash in on the original. I suppose 'the little girl and her imaginary friend' wouldn't have sold as many tickets. The actual film is almost totally devoid of incident or, indeed, interest, remaining completely dull throughout.The characters who return from the original just don't have the same allure of mystery as they did before, and the child actress just doesn't cut it I'm afraid. Some of the supporting actors give performances so dated that it feels like they're in a pantomime. Even so, such over-the-top acting is the only thing of interest in this lifeless production.

In Tarrytown, New York, lonely preteen Ann Carter (as Amy) relates to butterflies rather than other children, which worries father Kent Smith (as Oliver "Ollie" Reed). The girl is also befriended by aging actress Julia Dean (as Julia Farren), who inhabits the neighborhood's "haunted" house. Next, young Carter announces her best friend is Mr. Smith's deceased first wife, ghostly beauty Simone Simon (as Irena) from "Cat People" (1942). Smith and pretty second wife Jane Randolph (as Alice) hope their daughter isn't afflicted with the horrific curse that killed Ms. Simon in the earlier story...This sequel strikes a completely different tone than the original, but it works beautifully. Key to "The Curse of the Cat People" is the fact that Simon left no descendants, so producer Val Lewton and his team went in a different direction; this story amounts to Simon's redemption. In the lead role, Carter is captivating. The blending of her loneliness with the stories involving Simon and Ms. Dean are satisfyingly intertwined. Dean revels in her role as a washed up actress likely stricken with Alzheimer's; oddly, she received no "Supporting Actress" consideration. Of course, the title and promotion cheat.******** The Curse of the Cat People (3/2/44) Gunther von Fritsch, Robert Wise ~ Ann Carter, Kent Smith, Julia Dean, Simone Simon