We don't think of Cat People
as a remake at all, though it is
a remake in the technical sense, and we have revised certain specific
scenes - for instance, the swimming pool scene. I've always had
strong memories of that film, and numbered it among my favorites, but
when they screened it for me before I started writing, I was very
disappointed in it. It had two or three terrific sequences, but the
rest of it would barely make a TV-movie today - tame and talky and
unresolved. Certainly in the context of the forties, after
Frankenstein and mummies and wolf men, the picture was a breath of
fresh air; and Val Lewton certainly deserves credit for using a very
low budget to create a feeling of terror and suggestiveness, in an
almost poetic atmosphere. Casting Simone Simon was itself a stroke
of genius - she really conveyed a lot of that feeling in the original
film.
But today you're dealing with a situation where each film is
trying to outdo the one before, and the audience has come to expect
that, especially in terms of technology and state-of-the-art effects.
That's one of the reasons why they'll leave the house to go to the
movies. So a film at all like Lewton's would be a very risky
commercial prospect today.
I wasn't really happy with the voodoo idea, though I liked the
New Orleans setting. At that time Roger Vadim was scheduled to
direct, so he and I went down there, and I began work on a forty-page
treatment.
I wasn't too happy with Oliver as a psychiatrist, so even though
they accepted the treatment, I called them up a couple of weeks later
and asked if I could make him a zoo-keeper, which struck me as a
fresher and a bit funny in an ironic sense. In my first draft, Irena
was living with her brother, who was the leopard she helps to escape
from the zoo. She had full knowledge of her cat nature, fell in love
with Oliver, and attempted to break the voodoo spell. It also had a "Suddenly Last Summer"
sort of quality - a jaded New Orleans family
that had been in the slave trade some hundred years before and had
offended a voodoo priest who then cursed them to an incestuous history.
As I heard it, Schrader's agent recommended that he read the
script. He was interested in directing from a script that he had not
written himself. He read it and felt that, with a few changes, it
could become a commercial property.
The working relationship between Schrader and myself was
excellent from day one. I agreed with his ideas and we worked
together in doing a third draft, Schrader did no actual writing on
it: rather, he supervised. I liked what I had written, but I didn't
care for the voodoo stuff. We both agreed and threw it out. We
enlarged on one of the characters and strengthened some other
aspects of the script.
After meeting with Schrader for three of four times, I went off
and did a very fast rewrite - in about a month. At the time the
actors' strike was hanging over everyone's head, and if that were to
come about, no business would be transacted at the studios. But we
got it in under the wire, and Universal accepted it.
The first draft wasn't at all explicit in that area (linking the
actors and the leopards) and the transformation was entirely off-
screen. While I was doing the second draft I thought, "'Why not show
it?'" I kept thinking, what would I do if I were doing the effects?
and I found that I loved the idea of a panther breaking through
Irena's skin...
Tom Burman, in charge of special effects.
I was very pleased to work on "Cat People", because they were planning to put more stress on the psychological aspects of the story than on the graphic elements. But when Universal saw it, they were apparently thinking of the success of pictures like "The Howling" and "An American Werewolf in London", and so they wanted more of that sort of thing. We produced some very effective things for them, but when they edit it, they'll have the choice of dwelling on the graphic aspect, or bringing out the psychological elements. I do hope they'll choose the latter.
© Twilight Zone 4/82
Transcribed/Archived 1997-2008 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net