...this one is thoroughly commendable.Jacques Tourneur's "cat people " was more psychological Freudian fantasy and horror whereas Robert Wise 's sequel mostly deals with Gothic horror.This Gothic horror he would take to its absolute peak with "the haunting" ,twenty years after.
For a relatively short movie (about 70 min),there are SIX almost equally important female characters:the girlie,her mother,her teacher,her "friend" ,the old (laughing)lady and her daughter.This is the continuing story of Oliver Reed (not the actor)and the Alice whom he married after first wife Irena's death.The three characters -you read well even Irena) appear in the sequel.There's a lot of Gothic elements :the old house where an old lady tells terrifying tales about "sleepy hollow" (precisely Tim Burton's "spleepy hollow"),the strange borders of dream and reality,of the living and the dead,a subject which will be used a lot of times ;even if we can see the '"friend" ,she recalls sometimes Victor's part in Amenabar's masterful "the others".
But like in Tourneur's version,there may be also a Freudian side :the father/daughter does not seem to be very satisfying at the beginning of the film.Would the child be Irena's psychic daughter?
For a relatively short movie (about 70 min),there are SIX almost equally important female characters:the girlie,her mother,her teacher,her "friend" ,the old (laughing)lady and her daughter.This is the continuing story of Oliver Reed (not the actor)and the Alice whom he married after first wife Irena's death.The three characters -you read well even Irena) appear in the sequel.There's a lot of Gothic elements :the old house where an old lady tells terrifying tales about "sleepy hollow" (precisely Tim Burton's "spleepy hollow"),the strange borders of dream and reality,of the living and the dead,a subject which will be used a lot of times ;even if we can see the '"friend" ,she recalls sometimes Victor's part in Amenabar's masterful "the others".
But like in Tourneur's version,there may be also a Freudian side :the father/daughter does not seem to be very satisfying at the beginning of the film.Would the child be Irena's psychic daughter?