Joe Dante on CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2013
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Elizabeth Russell is my great great aunt. My paternal grandmothers aunt. We have movie studio telegrams and photos from her movie and modeling days. I never got to meet her so I treasure the pix
I actually like this better than Cat People (which is still fab). I just love the whole dark fairytale vibe to it. It has atmosphere and a lovely performance from young Anne Carter.
This is one of my personal favorites of the entire Val Lewton canon. This moody, bittersweet fairytale is sadly undervalued. I have seen Gunther Von Fritsch's name pop up on those between feature shorts that they run on TCM. As usual, the real superstar here is seminal noir cinematographer Nick Musuraca, who shot most of the Lewton films. He has never been better.
Have loved this film ever since I first saw it in 1981. It rarely fails to get the tears rolling down my cheeks! With help from the British Film Institute back in 1981 I was provided with an address for Simone Simon, who was by then very elderly. I wrote to her and many months later she sent me an autographed photo which I still treasure.
"Cat People" & its sequel are two of the most outrageously-underrated movies ever made. Unfortunately, the dopey titles (which Lewton himself was none too fond of) tend to discourage people from taking them seriously.
I love this movie because it is such an unexpected departure from the original,which stands as a classic on it's own merits. In doing so, it becomes original. "Sweetly creepy" is accurate enough, yet it's also poignant and oddly endearing with several moral messages. If another version is ever restored and released, I will happily line up to buy that one too.
Is it weird that I consider Curse a Christmas movie... and one I have to watch every year with The Grinch (Chuck Jones' version of course!) Charlie Brown, and all those other Christmas classics? I'm commenting on Christmas Eve, by the way.
First time I ever saw it, I was a little kid and I was really sick... I stayed home from a Christmas party (I was an outcast anyway) and this came on TV. I drifted in and out of sleep to the story of another sensitive loner little girl. It effected me so viscerally I spent years trying to find someone who knew of it, but I didn't know its (stupid) title, so I had to go on description alone. Some part of me wondered if I hadn't hallucinated the whole thing.
Many years later I saw Cat People and the only connection I made was that the cat lady had the same name as Amy's playmate in the other movie I had seen. I was finally able to figure out from the credits how to spell Irena and promptly plugged it, along with some other search terms, into Google... and only then did I find that the movie I'd been searching for for years was a sequel to the one I'd just watched. I mean... the two films just could not have been more different. Anyway, they've made a loose remake of Cat People... I'd kind of like to see a revisiting of the ideas in Curse, but perhaps away from the ties of Cat People. I hear a lot of people were disappointed in Curse because they expected something tonally similar to the genuinely spooky and exciting Cat People. I love both films, but I must say I like Curse a teeny weeny bit more... it's just got this serenity to it, and while it's less tense, it's more psychologically interesting. They're both AMAZING though, and it's a shame they have to be compared when all they really have in common is their titles and a couple of characters who really coulda been anyone.
Anyway, sorry I got wordy. Thanks for the insight on this wonderful film, and keep up the good work.
+Ruby Doomsday You said it so well, I love this movie too also more than the first one. It's sad, spooky and just very atmospheric and very x-massy indeed so it's well suited for that season's viewing. Wish someone in the TV world would see that too, many of the Lewtons were in fact also thus showing it like other traditions. Carter may have been the best child actress, certainly of her time. Would be cool to see the other version Dante speaks of.
+reclaimerReclaimer Someone in the TV world, or heck, someone with one of those quirky theaters that does things like show indie docs and hold Rocky Horror events... it would be so amazing to experience it on the big screen in late December, wouldn't it? :)
It sure would, it has the right spirit for that season. So many horror films oddly enough fit this most emotional season of all, I tend to watch some Lewtons and Feaarless Vampire killers, stuff like that. Or if it has snow it counts and will work. :)
Love this film.
I love this beautiful film but I always knew that a lot of it had been cut, mainly the explanation of the old lady and her daughter.
It's gently hinted at that the 2 creepy ladies are Cat People though it's never explicit in the script itself
@@JEFFIE-jp6kj I never even thought of that! What gave you that clue? I haven't seen the beautiful film in a long time now.
@@MrLanternland Elizabeth Russell is directed to act cat-like in almost every scene, creeping around the house, peering around corners, Julia Dean always dressed in black sits next to a stuffed cat with a bird in it's mouth
@@JEFFIE-jp6kj In early 1997 i forgot who it was - he gave a talk at the university here - the director of the film or something. I asked him if a lot had been cut out of the movie, especially concerning those two women. He just said he didn't remember. I need to watch it again now. Do u know if it's online someplace? I'll look later.
@@MrLanternland it's not on UA-cam I know, yes there was at least one sequence cut of Irena saving Amy from Barbara in the old house