Leopard Man, a review by Jon
LEOPARD MAN4 out of 5I've seen some reviewers dismiss this as another take on Cat People, but I think that is unfair. Ok, there are some base similarities, but Leopard Man abandons some of the complex morals in favour of a more regular random attack story. Not that it skimps on the emotional side I've come to respect from a Val Lewton production.
Also Cat People was supernatural and the story was mainly concerned with characters trying to find a more tangible explanation. Here, a tame leopard escapes and kills a girl. It is then blamed for more deaths, but some insist it is a human murderer. We the audience are perhaps the only ones considering a cross between the two, maybe because we just watched Cat People(!), but it is definitely inferred anyway.
It's possibly the most genuinely scary film of the set so far, because it shares Cat People's use of shadow and suggestion, but also adds a huge amount of build-up for the victims. Despite the short running time it shares with the other films (just over an hour!), much effort is made to draw you into their lives so it's all the more nerve-shredding when they finally face the terror. The blood running under a locked door as a family desperately try to get it open is very memorable (that it was locked in a petty squabble just adds to the moral tension that Lewton does so well). These are Hitchcockian levels of detail and audience manipulation, working with the barest of tools. If only Val and Al could have met! Actually, no, they'd have probably worn each other out. I should wish instead that filmmakers of today would watch films like theirs and actually understand how to construct a proper, scary, character driven slasher instead of trotting out another cheerleader or three.
Not that I have the slightest thing against cheerleaders, trotting or otherwise.
(From Val Lewton Horror Marathon on October 4th, 2008)
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May 18, 2024, 12:27:33 AM
