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Quick LinksVal Lewton Revolutionized Low-Budget Horror MoviemakingThe Curse of the Cat People Is One of Cinema's Best Films About Childhood ImaginationGenerational Trauma Is a Key Theme in The Curse of the Cat People

Directed by Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise, The Curse of the Cat People is an underrated 1944 psychological supernatural horror thriller that deserves to rank alongside the greatest sequels in cinema history. The Curse of the Cat People was one of eleven legendary B movies Val Lewton produced for Rko Pictures between 1942 and 1946. Lewton's historic run as a producer began in 1942 with Cat People, a low-budget B horror movie that became a surprise box office hit. Looking to capitalize on Cat People's commercial success, Rko Pictures commissioned Lewton to produce a sequel. While many sequels fall victim to being an inferior, copy-and-paste version of their predecessor, Lewton ensured that The Curse of the Cat People was...

Today, the classic movie monsters of the 1930s and '40s are widely identified as social outcasts. Characters like Dracula and Frankenstein were ostracized for their otherness and unable to fulfill their romantic longings, which made them sympathetic antiheroes for many viewers. However, the Universal monsters are overwhelmingly male, and female horror fans will have to look elsewhere for relatable outsiders. One excellent option lies with the often-overlooked Cat People films.

1942's Cat People takes the typically masculine wolf man trope and twists it into a tale of female alienation, while 1944's The Curse of the Cat People weaves a dark fable about a strange little girl. Paul Schrader's 1982 Cat People remake adds layers of delirious sensuality, and an outrageous 1992 Stephen King film carries on the werecat tradition. The Universal monsters may get all the attention, but the Cat People films offer a distinctly feminine approach to their traditionally masculine territory.

These days it seems like Christmas and horror go together like hot cocoa and candy canes sharpened to a deadly point, but in the long history of film, this is a relatively recent development. Of course there are a few exceptions, but before 1972, it was a rarity to enjoy a vicious Christmas at the local theater. As to why horror was not set at Christmas for so long is an interesting question. Perhaps it was considered off limits to use what many consider a sacred holiday for such dark purposes. But then, holidays of any kind, including Halloween, were rarely seen in horror films before the seventies. In those days, studios would often roll out their theatrical releases over long periods of time, and limiting the reliable market fulfilled by horror films to the small window of the holiday season was likely a risk they were unwilling to take. In the golden age of Hollywood,...

The feline frights of 1942's Cat People continue in the 1944 sequel The Curse of the Cat People, and to celebrate the film's new high-def home media release, Scream Factory has provided us with three Blu-ray copies to give away to lucky Daily Dead readers.

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Prize Details: (3) Winners will receive (1) Blu-ray copy of The Curse of the Cat People.

How to Enter: We're giving Daily Dead readers multiple chances to enter and win:

1. Instagram: Following us on Instagram during the contest period will give you an automatic contest entry. Make sure to follow us at:

https://www.instagram.com/dailydead/

2. Email: For a chance to win via email, send an email to contest@dailydead.com with the subject “The Curse of the Cat People Contest”. Be sure to include your name and mailing address.

Entry Details: The contest will end at 12:01am Est on July 3rd. This contest...

The Curse of the Cat People (1944) sees the return of Oliver (Kent Smith), who is remarried and living with his family in New York. Everything seems fine until his daughter Amy admits to being possessed by Oliver's first wife, Irena, a cat person. Witness the film on Blu-ray for the first time courtesy of Scream Factory on June 26th. In the meantime, check out two high-def clips and the trailer:

The Curse of the Cat People Blu-ray: "Filled with "wonderful atmosphere [and] fine, moody fantasy" (Leonard Maltin), this continuation of 1942's Cat People follows Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), now remarried, living in idyllic Tarrytown, New York, and the father of six-year-old Amy. When Amy becomes withdrawn and speaks of consorting with a new "friend," Oliver worries that she may be under the influence of the spirit of his first wife. Is it just Amy's imagination that has manifested the enigmatic Irena...

The Curse of the Cat People has been a featured film in Perry Ruhland's Crypt of Curiosities column, and we're excited to now share Scream Factory's full Blu-ray release details for the 1944 movie:

Press Release: Scream Factory has announced the June 26 release of The Curse of the Cat People, which will bow on Blu-ray for the very first time.

Filled with “wonderful atmosphere [and] fine, moody fantasy” (Leonard Maltin), this continuation of 1942’s Cat People follows Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), now remarried, living in idyllic Tarrytown, New York, and the father of six-year-old Amy. When Amy becomes withdrawn and speaks of consorting with a new “friend,” Oliver worries that she may be under the influence of the spirit of first wife. Is it just Amy’s imagination that has manifested the enigmatic Irena (Simone Simon), who long believed herself to be descended from a race of Cat People?

Directors Gunther V.

Next to Universal, few studios have had such a big impact on horror than Rko Radio Pictures. Started in 1927, Rko was the first studio founded to make exclusively sound films, a then-brand-new invention that served as a major draw for the studio. Rko’s life was relatively short (it was killed just 30 years after forming), but during their time, they put out a seriously impressive number of classics, including Top Hat, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Informer, and most notably, Citizen Kane.

Of course, Rko didn’t shy away from horror. While their output wasn’t nearly as prolific as, say, Universal’s, it was still quite impressive, boasting some of the most formative and important horror films of old Hollywood. Rko saw the release of a few all-time classics, including I Walked With a Zombie, The Thing From Another World, King Kong, and the topic of today’s Crypt,...

After The Seventh Victim‘s disappointing returns, Val Lewton and Rko clashed over their next project. Lewton wanted a comedy, provisionally titled The Amorous Ghost, as a change of pace; studio boss Sid Rogell, Lewton’s bete noir, insisted on a sequel to Cat People, which Lewton resisted. Then Rko suggested a Universal-style monster rally, They Creep By Night, reuniting villains from past Lewton pictures. Charles Koerner rescued Lewton from this absurd prospect by pitching a maritime thriller. “Call it The Ghost Ship,” Koerner ordered. Lewton also scored a big, though past-his-prime star in Richard Dix, an Oscar nominee for Cimarron (1931).

The result is equal parts The Sea Wolf and M, with a dash of Edgar Allan Poe. Tom Miriam signs on as third officer on the ill-starred freighter Altair, ruled by Captain Stone (Richard Dix). At first Stone merely seems strict, but his homilies about authority take on a...

'Cat People' 1942 actress Simone Simon Remembered: Starred in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic (photo: Simone Simon in 'Cat People') Pert, pouty, pretty Simone Simon is best remembered for her starring roles in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie Cat People (1942) and in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938). Long before Brigitte Bardot, Mamie Van Doren, Ann-Margret, and (for a few years) Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm in a film career that spanned a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both sides of the Atlantic – at times, with fatal results. During that period, Simon was featured in nearly 40 movies in France, Italy, Germany, Britain, and Hollywood. Besides Jean Renoir, in her native country she worked for the likes of Jacqueline Audry...

It's Tim. September marks the centennial of famed director Robert Wise, winner of Oscars for the musicals West Side Story and The Sound of Music among several other classic films, and the members of Team Experience are going to spend the next several days revisiting work from the entire range of his career. And what better place to start than at the very beginning: 1944's The Curse of the Cat People, which was Wise's directorial debut, taking over from Gunther V. Fritsch, when the project fell behind schedule. It's part of the legendary run of movies produced by Val Lewton's horror-oriented B-unit at Rko, a studio where Wise had already logged time as an editor (cutting both Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, no less). But it's not, itself, a horror movie, despite being the sequel to Cat People, one of the canonically great horror films in history. And...

Ann Carter, a former child actress who starred in the haunting 1940s fantasy The Curse of the Cat People before her career was curtailed by polio, has died. She was 77. Carter died Jan. 27 in North Bend, Wash., after a nine-year battle with ovarian cancer. Carter also appeared as Veronica Lake’s daughter in I Married a Witch (1942), as a young Norwegian girl opposite Paul Muni in the war movie Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) and as Humphrey Bogart’s daughter in the murder thriller The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), also starring Barbara Stanwyck. At age 7, Carter starred as

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Sometimes ideas are better left unfulfilled. A case in point; taking two of the biggest studio stars of all time, Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck, and putting them in a suspense noir with strong Gothic overtones. In concept, this is not a bad idea; it gives each star a new and unfamiliar angle to play with Bogart as a mentally unstable painter and Stanwyck playing a passive and helpless victim a year before her superior turn in Sorry, Wrong Number. When no aspect of the project is inspired, the result is a dud. Newly available on DVD from the Warner Brothers Archive, The Two Mrs. Carrolls is a sad and lackluster combination of elements fused together with an utter lack of spirit.

Geoffrey Carroll (Humphrey Bogart) is a painter who woos Sally (Barbara Stanwyck). Very early in the film, she discovers that he already has a wife and a daughter...

As separate entities, Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck were acting stalwarts who headlined films and gave us superb performances in films like The Big Sleep and Double Indemnity, respectively. Bring them together in a thriller and it’s almost impossible for the sum to measure up to the two parts. The Two Mrs. Carrolls takes Bogart’s typically stoic persona and adds a tinge of artistic insanity as Stanwyck does away with her strong female independence in favor of subservience and eventually mania. It’s an old-fashioned thriller that never strays from basic formula but also never offers up any genuine surprises (at least not anymore, now that the thriller genre has been cluttered by thousands of films with the same twist).

Bogart plays the private artist Geoffrey Carroll who has recently taken on a commission of painting a portrait of the young and flirtatious Cecily (Alexis Smith) at the...

We have a brand new exclusive clip from the Warner Archive DVD release The Two Mrs. Carrolls, which was made available on DVD for the first time today, March 1. Click below to watch Barbara Stanwyck questioning Humphrey Bogart from this 1947 drama.

Click to watch Exclusive: Frightened!

The DVD is available only through the Warner Archive program. clickHere for more information on how to order this long lost drama.

Matrimony means different things to different people. For temperamental artist Geoffrey Carroll, it means he's in his element. And out of his mind. In their only screen pairing, two of film's all-time greats star in a psychological thriller rife with pelting rain and pealing bells, blackmail and murder, calculated dread and an unnerving finale. Humphrey Bogart portrays Geoffrey, who's making a habit of poisoning one wife and marrying another when the former no longer inspires his canvases. Barbara Stanwyck plays his current wife Sally,...

How do I love The Curse of the Cat People (1944)? Let me count the ways. I love it because of the deceptive, dime-store title; the movie is really a clever and resounding study of child psychology. In the original film, Oliver (Kent Smith) marries the strange and alluring Irena (Simone Simon) before realizing that she's actually, sort of, a creature who turns into a cat and tears people to ribbons. In this sequel, Oliver is re-married, to Alice (Jane Randolph), and they have a little girl, Amy (Ann Carter). Amy has a very active imagination, and despite the best efforts of parents and teachers to get her to come back to reality, she likes the company of her imaginary friend, Irena! Yes, the ghost of Amy's father's first wife comes back to visit, and protect, the child.

Despite the title, there's no horror here, and just a bit of fantasy,...