LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

JohnHowardReid I don't suppose any horror film has created more critical controversy than Curse of the Cat People. It has its admirers, its detractors and those who stand in the middle. Me, I'm a firm admirer. I love the movie. I think it's almost perfect. Ann Carter is so convincing a little actress, it doesn't really matter that Simone Simon's role is so small, nor that the script is sometimes a bit ambiguous, nor that the story sometimes heads in one direction only to veer off in another. Miss Carter not only holds it all together but overshadows any and all deficiencies in script, support acting and production. It doesn't matter to me whether Irena is a real ghost or whether she exists solely in Amy's imagination. I don't care if Amy's fantasy world is Disneyesque, - why wouldn't it be? If the attitudes of her parents and teacher appear stiff or inconsistent or enigmatic, isn't this precisely the way they could be interpreted by a child? Once you view the movie from Amy's perspective, the inconsistencies and non-sequiters, the oddities and half-explained events, don't just dissolve but become part of the fabric of the child's vision. Such is the skill of Wise's editing and direction, it's impossible to tell where he begins and another leaves off. Musuraca's moodily atmospheric photography gives the images a luster that are always a joy to behold. The sets strikingly contrast Victorian fusty with cleanly modern, the workaday real with romantic fantasy. Irena's costume has been criticized, but isn't it precisely the trailing-sleeved gown of a fairytale princess? The music too, the carols, are highly appropriate. An engrossing 70 minutes. The pace never falters. The only thing wrong with The Curse of the Cat People is its title. OTHER VIEWS: Great acting from Ann Carter who is actually the lead in this alleged "sequel", with some excellent support from Sir Lancelot as the little missy's minder, Julia Dean as a half-mad old thespian and Elizabeth Russell as her embittered daughter, and of course Simone Simon as the is-she-menacing-or-is-she-not wraith of traumatic past. These players more than overcome any slight feelings of doubt audiences may have about the story and its veracity. John Howard Reid writing as Charles Freeman.

calvinnme This film is a lovely fantasy which is disguised as a horror film . It is the story of a little child named Amy Reed (Ann Carter) who doesn't seem to fit the mold of "normal" child. She is taken to daydreaming and seems to live in her own world of fantasy--back in the day when all children had to fit a certain mold. It shows her waiting for the children to arrive at her birthday party, and her father, Oliver, asks her is she sure she mailed the invitations, she assures him she did and shows him a hole in a tree where she put them. Her father had told her it was a magic mailbox.The children in the neighborhood run away from her and she starts to talk to a voice coming from an old house, someone throws a key to her and she enters the house to find an old woman who lives with her daughter. Apparently the woman thinks her daughter (Elizabeth Russell) is an imposter.Amy is playing in her garden. She makes a wish on a ring the old woman gave her and she wishes for a friend, all of a sudden a beautiful lady, dressed in white robes, appears and tells her she will be her special friend, The seasons pass and the two friends become very close--until the day she opens a drawer and a photograph of her "friend' falls out"--it seems the friend in the garden is her father's first wife,Irena.Actually the character of Oliver Reed leaves much to be desired, as a husband and father. He emotionally cheated on Irena and ultimately drove the poor soul to her death and now his daughter is seeing visions of her. He claims he wants the truth from the girl, but what he wants is HIS truth - deep down he knows what he did to Irena and is afraid she is back to hurt his child by the woman with whom he cheated on her, even if just in spirit.I'll let you watch and see how this all works out. Ultimately this is a film about societal nonacceptance of imagination, creativity, and individual uniqueness. Amy Reed (Ann Carter) is considered "weird," so she is quickly shunned by her fellow classmates. This places her in an isolated world to which she has to rely on her imagination and creativity to spawn a world of acceptance. She wants a "friend." Don't we all. Highly recommended and quite different.

GL84 Trying to help his shy daughter, a man's efforts to give her a friend results in her conjuring her mother as a playmate and spending more time with her to where they find the truth about her and try to stop her before she gets to the child.There isn't a whole lot to this one. One of the better points for the film is the general plot-line. It's a little original and does offer up some potentially disturbing ideas here of the dead mother coming back to her daughter as an imaginary friend, though that tends to fall off quite easily in here. Every now and then, this pops out a pretty nice suspense scene, as the initial walk-through of the house does get some good moments in, as there's a really creepy air going through the place from the large amount of furniture and other objects found to the darkness of the place really makes for a creepy sequence. What also works is the latter scene where she's startled in her sleep from the howling wind, mainly for adhering so closely to horror conventions over the years. The only other thing that works here is the final chase, as the run through the snowy forest looking for her friend, the dogs on her trail and finally finding shelter at the house here for a big final confrontation. These here are the only right parts, but as much good as there is, there's the same amount of bad. This is due to their not being a whole lot wrong since there isn't much at all to the film. Nothing much happens at all in the way of scares, suspense, action or even jumps, and at times very rarely feels like a horror film. There's a bit of potential due to the original plot, but the fact that nothing at all happens really destroys this one. That is the main and central flaw with this one, which is just as bad as it's other one, where it rarely feels like a horror film. This is due to the film really failing to make any real threat associated with what's happening here as though everyone here knows who she is and what happened to her that doesn't come across over to this one. This really could've done something by hinting that the daughter could've started to act like her mother once they let her in on who her playmate really is when she was still alive, but instead this one utilizes the time showing her shyness with other kids and treats the whole affair like a story told by a child with an overactive imagination. This is a really damaging part here as this here not only devalues of lot of what happened in the original but really keeps the film from really embracing what kind of film it really is with the avoidance of being a horror film so much a part of this one. Likewise, the other part that makes no sense here is the relationship of the two women in the house who are given a status to each other but continually deny it without saying why, and the entire point here is lost and quite confusing. These are the main strikes against it.Today's Rating/G: Nothing.

leoperu Many a reviewer is raving about this Gothic-spiced lyrical melodrama masked as a horror by its nonsensical title. A unique portrait of child's soul, some say. In my opinion, the movie (as well as other Lewton's "horrors") surely has its strengths (above all Musuraca's b+w photography), but cannot be lauded as a masterpiece. One should bear in mind that - not mentioning fiction,i.e. stories by Henry James, Géza Csáth and others - within the same decade genuine cinematic jewels emerged in Europe, such as "The Fallen Idol" (1948) or "Les jeux interdits" (1952). THESE were adult films dealing with child psycho(patho)logy, not Lewton's fairy tale overloaded with ambitions but also simplistic and clichéd, reflecting the theme in the mirror of Hollywood's emblematic immaturity. I can hardly believe that "The Curse of the Cat People" became "a gold mine" for Reed and Clément, nor, as "CINEPASSION" puts it, later for Erice and Saura. Yet you never know.As for the image, the R2 German edition (lacking extras) is even better than the R1 Warner disc.