Cat People Review

By Kimberly Sabat

What do you get when you combine a skittish Serbian, with a clean cut American construction designer? A movie that doesn’t deserve color even if they had it back then! Irena Dubrovna meets Oliver Reed in a zoo where no one has heard of natural habitats. The animals pace back and forth across concrete floors waiting for entertainment, and apparently so do the chicks. Trying to sketch a panther, and realizing she isn’t making the grade, we find this eco-aware woman to be no basketball star. Missing the garbage with her famous 3 point shot, she catches her beau who chastises her for littering. Funny, it didn’t seem to help since she rips up another sketch, and another leaving it on the ground to blow away.

How quickly relationships moved in the 40’s. I guess a guy can be wooed into doing anything when you’re a girl who looks like an older Dorothy Gale and you talk out of the right half of your face. I suppose with a multi-billion dollar movie such as this, they didn’t have enough cash to get an actress that didn’t have a lisp. Either way, over the span of 3 days they fall in love, and get married, as well as plan on children! Guess that is the reason why everyone’s parents from this time are so happy together, sleep in different beds, and avoid each other during the day.

Moving on, we find the new Mrs. Reed has more emotional problems than Oliver thought. Scared of the tales told in her hometown about the cat people, working for Satan, she fears kissing her husband incase it sparks her transformation into a cat. Well who said getting married means you have to kiss! Its not like you do these things because you like it!

But this turns out to be a love triangle that shocked even Oliver. He realizes he has a thing for his co-worker Alice. And sending his newly wedded woman to Dr. Judd, a psychiatrist, is Oliver’s last resort at getting their relationship help. It turns out more characters jump into this orgy. The Dr. has a thing for Irena Dubrovna. Now it wouldnt’ be so creepy if he didn’t look like Walt Disney and dress like Al Capone.

When Irena finds out about Alice, she attempts to kill her, but ends up just frightening Alice. What a turn on! It gives new meaning to the term cat fight doesn’t it. What did your parents tell you the first thing you should do when you assume a big cat will strike? Jump in a pool in the dark and scream, right! The 40’s weren’t known for showing much skin compared to today. However Ms. Alice Moore, flashes her curves for Sears swim wear. You gotta’ love how those bathing suits put that rippling seam right over the nipple. Mmm mmm. Or else that is pure excitement from Alice’s scare, and it caused her boobs to grow welts?

Getting near to the climax, Oliver takes the Doctor’s advice and has an intervention with Irena, the chaste. It ends up being Alice, Oliver and the Dr. Judd having a disappointing 3 way in the apartment. No frigid Irena to swing this time, she isn’t interested in being told her marriage has just been annulled. Irena is busy stalking, and waiting for some handouts at the fish market. When she returns home however, she finds the lusty Walt Disney waiting for her animal appetite. We knew the centaur scenes in FANTASIA were a secret sexual fantasy of yours Walt. Out comes the cat, in sink the teeth, out comes the blood. Bye bye Dr. Disney, and we thought you died peacefully.

After the other two Irena must now go. You have to love those poopie pawprints on the street. Directors can use ANYTHING in place of blood in black and white movies, but I guess they ran out of chocolate syrup and went straight for the solids this time. Ew.

Finally, the end scene where some cat is pictured out of it’s cage. Looks so scary when you’re poking a panther, and throwing it where you want, to make it seem like it is fiercely attacking. Where is PeTa when you want a good laugh? Not here. Getting creamed by a truck outside the zoo, we realize the cat which Irena was always trying to sketch, was linked with her life. At least that is how I understood it. If you can’t write an ending to a movie, confuse the plot by creating choppy scenes. Thats what I say. A dead panther under a truck, a dead panther outside a zoo cage that they refer to as Irena. Whatever. Boo hoo.

The real sad thing is knowing these animals weren’t treated so well back then, and catching glimpses of it in movies like this. More shades of people in those times oppressing their own feelings so they outwardly seem just peachy? Tossing great cats over walls, confining them in cement and iron cages, man the animals today don’t know how bad their grandparents had it. They paced 50 miles in a 10 by 10 foot cage just to get a piece of frozen meat, get hit with a stick, be plastered all over the big screen, and become a road waffle. Damn kids nowadays have no respect.

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