Cat People (1942), starring Simone Simon and Kent Smith, is a shining example of the sort of innovation producer Val Lewton brought to the horror genre. Pretty much just given a title and asked to create a movie from scratch, Lewton seized the opportunity to not so much go for outright shocks but to explore darker themes in a classy and low-key manner. Classy and low-key is what Cat People does best, its success lying in how it plays with the viewer's mind, coincidentally enough, like a cat with a mouse.

It's a bright, sunny day when the dashing Oliver Reed (Smith) and the beautiful Irena Dubrovna (Simon) have their own little meet-cute at the zoo. The pair hits it off, enters a whirlwind courtship, and are married faster than you can say, "Bob's your uncle." But there's something in Irena's past that's troubled her all of her life. In the Serbian village she grew up in, there's a legend of a race of people (people descended from witches who were chased into the mountains long ago) who have the ability to turn into great cats.

Irena believes herself to be one of these cat people and fears that becoming intimate with her new spouse may cause her to transform into a ferocious beast. Despite her unwavering belief, Oliver laughs it all off as superstition, watching as the emotional distance between the couple grows and drives him closer into the arms of a co-worker (Jane Randolph) -- an act that threatens to unleash Irena's dark side, feline or not.

One could view Cat People as both a companion piece and antithesis to Universal's 1941 horror great, The Wolf Man. Both films serve as introspective tales about the duality of women and men respectively, but in the case of Cat People, exploring this premise takes top priority over touting revolutionary makeup techniques or scaring the popcorn out of folks' laps. At the heart of this feature is the story of a woman at odds with her own sexuality, having lived in a self-sustained state of repression and finding herself afraid to open up for fear of her "wild" side causing both physical and mental anguish. This is tragedy of the highest order, centered on a woman stuck in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" sort of position in which keeping the very thing that threatens Irena's relationship with Oliver most is what's driving them apart and eventually piquing her inner fury.

But as Cat People goes to show you, one can't make assumptions with a story like this, as director Jacques Tourneur (who also helmed Lewton productions The Leopard Man and I Walked with a Zombie) toys with whether Irena really is a shapeshifter or has gone off the deep end. It's a game that engages the viewer for quite a while, up until the admittedly rushed climax, in which the story pretty much has a definitive answer to its central mystery and allows some of its suspenseful magic to dry up as a result.

Nevertheless, Cat People continues to work just as well as a low-budget creeper as it does a surprisingly somber drama. The scare sequences are scant, but I'll be darned if they aren't all the more effective for it, especially in the famous swimming pool scene, where Irena's rival for Oliver's affections is stalked by something in the dark.

Cat People is a film that really takes the "less is more" policy to heart. There are moments when it does show you more than you want to see, which sort of ruins the atmosphere a bit, but on the whole, the flick is befitted with an uncommon sense of intelligence and appreciation of characterization that you just don't see much in a horror movie these days.

Director: Jacques Tourneur

Writer: DeWitt Bodeen

Cast: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph

Rating: No MPAA Rating (pretty safe content for middle schoolers)

Classic Movie Guide Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Run Time: 73 minutes

Studio: RKO Radio Pictures

Format: Black-and-white, fullscreen