Cat People

Director: Paul Schrader

1982 / 118min / DCP

In undertaking his remake of Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 Cat People, Schrader, fresh from the high-style success of American Gigolo, drenched the material in druggy-delirious ’80s excess, including a Giorgio Moroder synth score (with David Bowie-sung theme), lavish production design by Ferdinando Scarfiotti (credited as “Visual Consultant”), and Nastassja Kinski at the height of her androgynous glamor. Kinski plays a young woman newly arrived in New Orleans to reunite with long lost older brother Malcolm McDowell, only there to discover during visits to the zoo (and through a burgeoning relationship with zookeeper John Heard) that she’s inherited her family’s unusual affinity for large, predatory cats… Tawdry, transgressive, and transcendent filmmaking.