Director: Jacques Tourneur
Year: 1943
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Working in a Spanish-themed nightclub, a leopard paired up with a singer for an act runs away during the performance, and a vicious crime spree sweeps through the city shortly after where the leopard is behind the attacks, and she goes out to try to catch the killer cat before it strikes again.
Review:
While this one's a little flawed, it does have some good moments in it to make it more watchable than most. One of its best features is that the creature is loose at the very beginning of the film, as the very first scene in the film has the cat loose, which means that there's plenty of opportunity for attacks spread throughout. The first confrontation is its best overall scene, as it's inside an exceptionally creepy location with some great action scenes and a fantastic conclusion that is far ahead of the types of attacks generally shown at the time, and it becomes quite violent and brutal.
That it actually takes place off- screen through sounds makes it a lot more thrilling than it really should be. This is a really great, chilling scene that is suspenseful and spooky. There's even a mild amount of bloodshed from the attack. Another scene in a graveyard preceding a second attack is pretty creepy and suspenseful as well, with a long, stalking-like set-up through a pretty creepy-looking location. That there's a sensible-sized body count also works, making it seem a lot more fast-paced despite all the talking in between. This one is a little better than expected.
There are some pretty big flaws in the film. One of the worst ones is that it spends tons of time on useless scenes and subplots that serve no purpose in the film. The scenes with the family celebrating the birthday are the most obvious, for there's no reason to feature these scenes at all, as watching a family member wandering around picking up a gift and then celebrating with each other is a giant series of useless scenes. These are placed in the middle of a series of scenes that are simply excruciating to sit through. They're boring, dull, and have nothing at all to do with the cat tale.
They're also hard to sit through for the fact that nothing interesting goes on in them. It's not exciting to see that scene-after-scene of watching people do absolutely nothing, yet continue to talk away. That there's not even an attack as a result of these scenes is only another matter against them since it happens off- screen after a pretty nice set-up, which is what makes the scene so infuriating. These make it a little more flawed than expected, but luckily, the positives hold it up some.
Overview: ***.5/5
A little flawed but an acceptable creature feature, there's a lot more to like here than expected, as it has enough to like that it holds up over the few drawbacks on display to hold it back. Those with an interest in this kind of genre fare, who appreciate this era of the genre, or who are fans of the creative crew, will have the most to like here, as most others should heed caution.
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