Rent The Leopard Man (1943)

Lewton Horror (spoiler). - The Leopard Man review by Steve

This is the last of Jacques Tourneur's trilogy of B horrors made with Val Lewton at RKO. A travelling showgirl (Jean Brooks) in New Mexico uses a leopard in her act on the insistence of her publicity manager (Dennis O'Keefe). When it goes missing, the small community fears that the cat is responsible for a series of grisly deaths. O'Keefe has other suspicions.

There are so many memorable scenes. When a girl goes to shop on the other side of town, she is swallowed up in the darkness of the underpass, which feels like the locus of her emerging adolescent fears. When she returns to her mother's locked house she is savaged by, something... As the parent frantically unbolts the door to her child, blood copiously tracks along the cracks in the floor.

A Mexican dancer Clo-Clo (played by 'Margo') seems to be cursed. As she walks through the town, the people she interacts with will perish; seemingly killed the escaped cat. The construction of the film is unusual; the narrative continually diverts to whoever intersects with Clo-Clo, which will end in death. There is a powerful impression of an inexorable, malign fate.

When the real serial killer is revealed, that illusion of destiny disappears. The deaths have no motive. And we have little knowledge of the mysterious forces that control our lives. This is a pessimistic, shadow world where people enter into the darkness from which they may be released. Or may not. 

Spoilers follow ... - The Leopard Man review by NP

In Val Lewton films, there’s always at least one scene that sticks in the mind. ‘The Isle of the Dead’ features the awakening of a body buried in a casket, in the ‘Body Snatchers’, we have the unforgettable finale. Here we have several , including the increasingly distraught teenage girl returning home, pounding at the door of her home with her mother heartlessly refusing to let her in – followed by silence, and the spreading of a pool of blood beneath the closed door.

Charlie (Abner Biberman) is nice, he likes his big cat. It earns him a good living and he clearly adores it. Alongside the animal itself, he is ‘The Leopard Man’s most likeable character. Dennis O’Keefe is a good leading man. Sad-eyed Jean Brooks plays Kiki Walker. Only the maracas-playing Clo-Clo (Margo) annoys – her jealousy that the cat would steal her thunder and her teasing of the animal causes killings and other unfortunate events to spiral, yet she shows no sign of giving a darn – until she gets her comeuppance, that is.

The implication of a man/leopard hybrid is completely absent in the story – in fact the revelation the feline has been dead before some of the killings take place, and that the murderer is a mere human, is a little disappointing (only the trailer implied a lycanthropic plotline). It’s true to say this is not Lewton’s most effective production: the modern day setting is less suggestive of gothic flavour than other, period pieces. Having said that, he and Director Jacques Tourneur ensure there are some chilling set-pieces, my favourite being the sombre funeral procession, with murmuring, candle-holding mourners making their way across a barren, windswept studio set, led by black robed lamenters.