DAY 10 of 31 DAYS OF HORROR:
CAT PEOPLE (1942) dir: Jacques Tourner
Jacques Tourner’s CAT PEOPLE (1942) relies on a strange story that begs the question of how such a weird film could have been made at the height of Classical Hollywood cinema. A man falls in love with a Serbian woman tortured and obsessed with a folkloric story of evil cat people ravishly destroying everything around them when jealous or sexually aroused. CAT PEOPLE effectively utilizes strange, foreign objects to make the film feel odd and dreamlike. However, two particular scenes really stand out as smart, quiet uses of tension through sound and space.
The first, a night scene in which the mentally unstable protagonist stalks a woman she fears will steal her husband, triumphs in its use of sound. The repetitive sounds of high heels on the sidewalk go from two sets to one - giving the prey a suspicion that she’s not only being followed, but by something she can’t hear or see. She picks up the pace, and for a while, no other sounds can be heard but the clank of her heels on the cement. In an earned scare, a bus appears out of nowhere, right in front of the terrified woman. This could very well be one of the first “jump scares” to ever appear in a horror film.
The second and most memorable sequence, follows the prey as she gets ready to take a dip in an underground pool in the middle of the night. She hears the sounds of roars within the shadows and soon jumps straight into the pool. The camera oscillates from close-ups of her gasping for air in the water, and shots of the walls surrounding the pool, bathed in a shimmering light. The sounds of her lapping in the pool and the roars of the unknown feline echo incessantly throughout the chamber, creating a claustrophobic effect. These sequences prove that sound design is key in illustrating the monster in a horror film, perhaps even more than the visual.
