# Cat Girl (1957)

### reviewed by
Dennis Schwartz

CAT GIRL (director: Alfred Shaughnessy; screenwriter: Lou Rusoff; cinematographer: Peter Hennessy; editor: Jocelyn Jackson; cast: Barbara Shelley (Leonora), Robert Ayres (Dr. Marlowe), Kay Callard (Dorothy), Paddy Webster (Cathy), Ernest Milton (Uncle Edmund), Jack May (Richard), Lily Khan (Anna), Johnny Lee (Allan), 1957-UK)

    Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

A more-than-acceptable variation of Jacques Tourneur's Cat People (42), that is excellent in spots, but lags in its overall pacing. This AIP quickie, shot in Beaconfield studios, England, features Leonora (Barbara Shelley) in her first major role before becoming a horror film star (The Blood of the Vampire/The Shadow of the Cat/The Gorgon/Prince of Darkness). She is a repressed suburbanite, whose cheating husband Richard (Jack May) is having an affair with her friend Cathy (Webster), right under her nose.

Leonora is summoned back to the dreary house she grew up in the suburbs of London by her uncle (Milton) to receive her legacy. She was asked to come alone, but hates the place so much, that she brings her unsympathetic husband and two friends, Cathy and the constantly inebriated Alan (Lee), along. In the local pub, she stops for a drink and to recollect memories from her childhood before going back home. Dr. Marlowe (Ayres) is the local boy she loved but didn't marry. She was in a hurry to marry and couldn't wait for him to ask. She just couldn't wait to leave home and thereby married someone she didn't love. But she still loves Marlowe, and is surprised to see him enter the pub. He tells her he is now a psychiatrist in London, but keeps a weekend home here, and that he is happily married to Dorothy (Callard), whom he wants her to meet, as she greets that suggestion with a cold stare.

At her house, the dour housekeeper Anna (Lilly Kahn) greets her with the news that her uncle will see her only when she is alone. What he tells her is shocking, that she is not only an heir to the estate but to a family curse. He takes her to a secret room where a leopard is kept and tells her that upon his death she will inherit the family curse. She will have two separate entities in her, one will be her own- but in the darkness, she will be taken over by the leopard and become a ferocious animal, craving for flesh. After she learns by petting the leopard that she has complete control over him, she watches as her uncle wills the leopard to kill him.

Richard and Cathy go for walk on the estate grounds and start kissing. They are spotted by Leonora and the leopard appears, attacking and savagely killing Richard. Leonora, as the symbol of the repressed British female, has now come out of her reticent shell, venting an anger against her unfaithful husband. The scene is marvelously done, as it cuts away from the leopard's attack to picture Leonora enjoying this revenge.

Another memorable scene is the finale, where the arrogant psychiatrist is convinced that he could treat her as a victim of delusions, but fails to listen to what she tells him, even burning the occult books in her library. He foolishly places his wife in danger by leaving her alone with Leonora, for the experiment he is conducting to prove his theory. When a leopard appears on the road, about to attack Dorothy, he runs it over with his car. What is strange, is that Leonora is also lying dead from the impact of the car, with a piece of her raincoat on the car fender, even though she was not near the car. With her death, the family curse is gone.

Though very imitative of the Tourneur film and not quite as masterfully done, this rarely shown horror film is worth catching for its dark intensity and the eerie mood it sets.

    REVIEWED ON 3/16/2000       GRADE: B

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ

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