Tue 29 Sep 2015
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: CAT GIRL (1957).
Posted by Steve under Horror movies , Reviews[7] Comments
CAT GIRL. Insignia Films/AIP, 1957. Barbara Shelley, Robert Ayres, Kay Callard, Ernest Milton,Jack May. Written and produced by Lou Russoff (brother-in-law of Samuel Z. Arkoff, head of AIP). Directed by Alfred Shaughnessy.
A British-born variation on Val Lewton’s classic Cat People (1942) this is cheap and a bit crude, but oddly sensual for a 1950s Monster Movie.
Director Alfred Shaughnessy went on to some acclaim writing Upstairs Downstairs (1971-75) and writer-producer Lou Russoff was responsible for classics like The She Creature, It Conquered the World and Beach Party, so you can appreciate the dynamic tension present in the creative process here.
It all opens up in a creepy (and rather cheaply-furnished) old castle on a dark & stormy night, where Barbara Shelley is summoned to inherit the Family Curse, which has something to do with a psycho-spiritual link with predatory cats. Seems rather a heavy burden to bear — especially since the old man who passes on the familial blight gets mauled by a cheetah shortly thereafter — and I can’t imagine why the family didn’t simply opt to pay a fine instead, but I guess that wouldn’t make much of a movie, would it?
Anyway, Barbara has more to contend with than mere Doom; it also seems she’s married to an unfaithful boor who makes the Curse of the Cat People seem a mere inconvenience: greedy, condescending, completely self-centered, and it’s a bit of a relief when Barbara finds him out on the castle grounds shaking the bushes with a comely female guest and, in the words of one critic:
Well, that’s a good deal stronger than anything you’ll find in Cat People, and Barbara Shelley’s sexuality is much more overt than Simone Simon’s: she sleeps in the nude and goes about in a strapless gown apparently held up only by her firm anatomy — which in 1957 was pretty strong stuff, especially for a monster movie supposedly aimed at kiddies, but I digress.
Up to this point Barbara has all our sympathy, but it quickly develops that she’s still in love with an old boyfriend, now a happily-married psychologist, who begins treating her obvious symptoms of dangerous insanity. And naturally he decides that the best thing for her is to move in with him and his mousy missus, as the attentive viewer mutters, “Yeah, right,†or the functional equivalent.
At about this point, Cat Girl begins aping Cat People pretty shamelessly as Barbara’s jealousy turns to evil, and she starts plotting her rival’s demise. We get a variation on the birdcage scene from the earlier film, then a repeat of the night-stalk, leading up to a rather muddled conclusion where… well I won’t give it away, just take my word: it’s muddled.
Yet I still enjoyed Cat Girl, and if you have a taste for cheap monster movies you will too, thanks mainly to Barbara Shelley. Her sheer screen presence in a role with a bit of depth to it lifts this well out of the ordinary. In fact, even before I watched this last week, I remembered it with affection from when I saw it on its first release, sharing a double bill with The Amazing Colossal Man.
Now THAT was Bang for your two-bits!
September 29th, 2015 at 9:51 pm
A good review of an entertaining little movie.
September 29th, 2015 at 10:08 pm
Shelley just before she became the Brit scream queen. This is less erotic and more blatant than Lewton’s classic, the chills broadcast and little attempt to suggest a psychological rather than actual monster, but as a more juvenile take on the theme still good fun. Shelley seems to relish the fairly meaty part but is a bit let down by a bland cast.
September 29th, 2015 at 10:51 pm
While I was looking for images to add to Dan’s post I discovered that Shelley was also in a movie called THE SHADOW OF THE CAT, a Hammer film from 1961. Has anyone seen that one?
September 30th, 2015 at 1:15 am
“…a monster movie supposedly aimed at kiddies…” Well, I suppose that it depends on which market it was aimed at. Back in the ’50s Horror movies in the USA seemed to have been aimed at an audience containing a large proportion of kiddies. On the other side of the pond, in Britain, just about all Horror movies received the X certificate, which meant that people under 18 years of age were strictly excluded (although how strictly this was policed depended upon the cinema manager). The rather sensual, slightly kinky feel of Hammer movies was allowed, grudgingly, by the British censor because the audience were adults. This caused some panic in the early ’70s when Hammer began to include more blatant nudity. The American distributors didn’t mind kids seeing decapitation and the like, but bare boobs were beyond the pale.
CAT GIRL is an odd movie. It’s an odd meeting between several different styles of movie making. It’s interesting to compare this to CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN which came out at the same time. The Hammer movie is a mix of the genteel and the gruesome, and is much more self assured than CAT GIRL.
October 1st, 2015 at 5:30 pm
Had no idea of this movie until you posted this review. There’s a lot of more obscure, some probably pretty decent 1950s horror thrillers out there just waiting to be rediscovered. Halloween month is a good time for that!
November 28th, 2018 at 10:44 am
Shelley just before she became the Brit scream queen. This is less erotic and more blatant than Lewton’s classic, the chills broadcast and little attempt to suggest a psychological rather than actual monster, but as a more juvenile take on the theme still good fun. Shelley seems to relish the fairly meaty part but is a bit let down by a bland cast.
December 9th, 2018 at 4:33 am
A good review of an entertaining little movie.