We take a step back in time 80 years to take a look at the lesbian paranoia of Jacques Tourneur's magnificent, moody Cat People as our Pride series continues for the month of June. You're going to learn all about producer Val Lewton and his unique approach to horror as the high age of Universal gothic horror disappeared into the rear-view mirror of history and diminished. Your Frankensteins and Wolfmans were diminishing by way of smaller budgets and younger audiences into Sons of Frankenstin and Sons of Wolfmans and dragging down their A-list talent with them. But along came Lewton, newly promoted to the head of RKO's horror unit, with his trusted creative partners from the MGM days to take on small budgets with B-movie expectations only to crank out tense and arty movies deep in the throes of existential dread that contemporary movie audiences could take seriously and gay audience members could immediately recognize and relate to.
Lewton's career is regrettably short but in just six years he managed to put horror back in a respectable light and prove to studios and audiences alike that horror still had power.
In Cat People Lewton and Tourneur weave a deeply non-conformist tale about a woman cursed by the evil of her village's past sins to turn into vicious, bloodthirsty cats when their emotions were roused and use it to signal to gay viewers that you could also have your movie stand in for the internal struggle of gay audiences trying to be themselves in a world with a strict, rigid expectation of men and women and their expressions of love.
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