A: As a non-cat owner, how do you feel about them as animals?
M: Outside of kittens and a few internet celebrity cats, I find them sort of disquieting. I can’t quite read their intentions—they seem to have some eerie inner life that we can’t access.
A: That certainly fits these films' readings of cats. And maybe also of women.
M: It’s intriguing how, culturally, dogs are “male” and cats are “female”. And not just female, but female/sexy! Girls dressing up as cats for halloween, Catwoman, obviously both these films. They seem to be an oddly fetishized animal? Like they are a symbol for sex, despite the fact that most people don’t want to literally have sex with them (I hope). Is there something sexual about how they stretch out? How they move?
A: I can't say. I wonder if it has to do with domestication? You train a dog, but domesticate a cat… it's always been a strange thing for me as a cat person.
"You train a dog, but domesticate a cat… it's always been a strange thing for me as a cat person."
M: Why do you think you are a cat person?
A: I don't like your implications, it's entirely innocent! They are cute, cuddly companions. It's nice to have a little friend in the house.
(laughs)
M: You would think that would be the beginning and end of how we think about cats, and yet…
A:. ..here we are! I think I'd like to bring Cats (2019) and Avatar (2009) into this chat to talk about this exactly. Both the Cat People films mainly associate the female lead with the energy of the animal, whereas Avatar and Cats create this hybrid of cat/human. And both those films cross the line for me. In Avatar I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the Na’vi are designed to be sexualized in some way… in a fictional world featuring aliens, they don’t NEED to be tall, skinny, with long legs and big eyes. Narratively they could have looked like octopus, but we’re supposed to see them as at least cute, and then as the plot progresses and the protagonist falls in love with one, we’re supposed to make the leap from cute to sexy… then in Cats the casting alone shows how we’re supposed to see the “male” cats vs the “female” ones…
M: I guess when Irena (Simone Simon in the original, Nastassja Kinski in the remake) is a woman, she’s 100% a woman, whereas in Cats and Avatar we are dealing with anthropomorphized felines, which feels a little like bestiality.
A: Yeah, the original never shows any physical hybrid creature—we just get that she is catlike. And this makes her unknowable, skittish, sexy. The original has her become a cat at the end, but there's no physical mix. Which evidently makes the difference between me being repulsed or attracted by horny cat movies.
M: Paul Schrader does briefly show us a cat/human, and it is upsetting. That's one of the most fascinating things about watching both of these back to back, was how the periods in which they were made informed what we could see and not see. The decision to never show a transformation in the original was, in part, because they weren’t confident that they could pull it off. Whereas by the 1982 version, practical make-up effects were nearing their peak (it's the same year as An American Werewolf in London), and we get several really spectacular transformation sequences. Both are so defined by what was possible from an effects perspective, and what they could get away with from a censorship perspective. One wonders if the directors had to trade places, with Paul Schrader forced to make his version in the ‘40s, what would have come out.
A: I don't think Paul Schrader would have been allowed to exist in the ‘40s. But yeah, it makes them such an interesting pair! Both are incredibly concerned with sex—even the first one is explicitly about the fact that Irena won't let Oliver (Kent Smith in the original, John Heard in the remake) sleep with her because of the cat curse Irena claims to be under. Paul Schrader just went further and asked "yeah but what if he DID sleep with a cat person?" and showed us the consequences. Which leads to some incredibly erotic sex scenes in the remake... when Oliver ties Irena to the bed? Oh man.
M: I'm with you.
A: The leap from the original’s quiet, restrained, implied sexuality to outright erotica is really something. Schrader turned it from a curse into a kink.
"Schrader turned it from a curse into a kink."
M: Yeah, he makes several big deviations from the original, including inventing an aggressively prominent incest subplot.
A: It's interesting that it's basically a meme now how incest is the most common porn category. Schrader was ahead of his time! He makes some solid changes, like changing Oliver’s job from a marine engineer to a zookeeper. It’s an obvious thematic fit as his job is to control animals and that ties in with his desire to be with Irena, and then domesticate Irena. The original is also much more austere, both Irena and Oliver seem to be from old money, or at least have white collar jobs, and seem very chaste. It doesn't seem like a huge surprise for Oliver that he and Irena don’t sleep together—the original is set in an almost Victorian world where nobody fucks anyway. That, contrasted to the sweaty, topless, incest New Orleans that Schrader shows us… both films definitely have sex on the mind, but they go about it very differently.
M: The original is like Irena in woman-form, carefully reserved while seething with unfulfilled sexual energy. And then the remake is Irena in cat-mode, totally unleashed, aggressive, dangerous.
A: Schrader’s ending is arguably more disturbing too. Irena willingly locks herself away from society and John Heard doesn’t seem to have a problem being her jailer. It makes for a much messier and more frightening ending. More about dominance and submission than about the mysterious other.
M: Yeah, the original ends somewhat traditionally in comparison. Irena can’t control herself any longer and is killed for her indiscretions. It’s very similar to the ending of the original The Wolfman, which came out the year before. Strange that both versions came out alongside iconic werewolf movies.
A: I suppose these films are in that vein of “controlling the animal within” stories. Werewolves, The Hulk, Jeckle and Hyde... the original certainly feels like all the characters and the society want to be distanced from our animalistic sexual instincts.
M: Speaking of sexual instincts... I’ve got to talk about Annette O'Toole. She plays Alice, Irena's rival in the remake. I’ve been crushing on her hard since she played Superman's mom in Smallville. I had no idea she was in this, and I certainly had no idea she would be topless. Her nudity in the pool scene was utterly seismic for me. It overshadowed everything else in the film. I don’t have anything constructive to add to that. I couldn’t even focus on how they were recreating that scene from the original. My brain just stopped working.
A: I spent most of the movie thinking she looked familiar! It's interesting how that pool scene is almost verbatim from the original… but it's topless.
M: Another keen adaptation.
A: There are two parts that are almost verbatim—the pool scene, and then there's the woman at the bar who approaches Irena and speaks a foreign language.
M: They also tip their hat to the bus jump scare, which was nifty.
A: Oh that's true!
M: The pool scene is the highlight of the original for me. It’s so evocative and dreamy.
A: I absolutely love both iterations of both scenes, so no complaints here.
M: Circling back to the incest! Malcolm McDowell's character is an interesting addition. He’s a very compelling presence, but he also clutters the story somewhat. He sort of externalizes what was an internal conflict in the original. Instead of Irena struggling against herself, she spends much of the remake fighting against his influence.
A: I think he’s also there so we can get some nasty gore sequences early on, before Irena has transformed.
M: Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. He's a way to see a cat person do some terrible things while letting Irena off the hook. The non-sexual highlight of the movie is him (in cat form) mauling off that zookeeper’s arm. There’s a great, horrible escalation to that scene.
A: I loved that scene and was surprised to find out the character died.
M: That’s what put it over the top for me. This guy didn’t just get his arm ripped out... he bled to death. It’s gnarly stuff. It’s interesting though that we seem to be gravitating towards talking about the remake, because I think the original is the better film. It hypnotizes you with nothing but shadows and growls. And yet the remake is such a compelling mess that it demands more of your attention.
"It hypnotizes you with nothing but shadows and growls."
A: We might differ here! I'm quite solidly on the side of the remake—but then again I love The Canyons (2013) which is pretty derided... I'm just fascinated by Schrader's raunchy side. And it's also got that ‘80s excess which gets me lately.
M: Ah, that makes sense! I’m more of a vintage horror head so I tend to gravitate towards B&W vibes. Although I too am in awe of the ‘80s excess at play. The score, with the David Bowie theme, could only have come from 1982.
A: For sure. Now, we'd be remiss to end this convo without addressing the fact that both Irenas are really hot.
M: True, that's a salient point that we missed. And they both have vaguely feline features, which is great casting on both accounts.
A: Somehow we've looped back to sexualizing cats.
M: Cat, woman, Simone Simon or Nastassja Kinski, I love Irena in any form.
A: Amen.
M: Meow!
A: As a non-cat owner, how do you feel about them as animals?
M: Outside of kittens and a few internet celebrity cats, I find them sort of disquieting. I can’t quite read their intentions—they seem to have some eerie inner life that we can’t access.
A: That certainly fits these films' readings of cats. And maybe also of women.
M: It’s intriguing how, culturally, dogs are “male” and cats are “female”. And not just female, but female/sexy! Girls dressing up as cats for halloween, Catwoman, obviously both these films. They seem to be an oddly fetishized animal? Like they are a symbol for sex, despite the fact that most people don’t want to literally have sex with them (I hope). Is there something sexual about how they stretch out? How they move?
A: I can't say. I wonder if it has to do with domestication? You train a dog, but domesticate a cat… it's always been a strange thing for me as a cat person.
"You train a dog, but domesticate a cat… it's always been a strange thing for me as a cat person."
M: Why do you think you are a cat person?
A: I don't like your implications, it's entirely innocent! They are cute, cuddly companions. It's nice to have a little friend in the house.
(laughs)
M: You would think that would be the beginning and end of how we think about cats, and yet…
A:. ..here we are! I think I'd like to bring Cats (2019) and Avatar (2009) into this chat to talk about this exactly. Both the Cat People films mainly associate the female lead with the energy of the animal, whereas Avatar and Cats create this hybrid of cat/human. And both those films cross the line for me. In Avatar I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the Na’vi are designed to be sexualized in some way… in a fictional world featuring aliens, they don’t NEED to be tall, skinny, with long legs and big eyes. Narratively they could have looked like octopus, but we’re supposed to see them as at least cute, and then as the plot progresses and the protagonist falls in love with one, we’re supposed to make the leap from cute to sexy… then in Cats the casting alone shows how we’re supposed to see the “male” cats vs the “female” ones…
M: I guess when Irena (Simone Simon in the original, Nastassja Kinski in the remake) is a woman, she’s 100% a woman, whereas in Cats and Avatar we are dealing with anthropomorphized felines, which feels a little like bestiality.
A: Yeah, the original never shows any physical hybrid creature—we just get that she is catlike. And this makes her unknowable, skittish, sexy. The original has her become a cat at the end, but there's no physical mix. Which evidently makes the difference between me being repulsed or attracted by horny cat movies.
M: Paul Schrader does briefly show us a cat/human, and it is upsetting. That's one of the most fascinating things about watching both of these back to back, was how the periods in which they were made informed what we could see and not see. The decision to never show a transformation in the original was, in part, because they weren’t confident that they could pull it off. Whereas by the 1982 version, practical make-up effects were nearing their peak (it's the same year as An American Werewolf in London), and we get several really spectacular transformation sequences. Both are so defined by what was possible from an effects perspective, and what they could get away with from a censorship perspective. One wonders if the directors had to trade places, with Paul Schrader forced to make his version in the ‘40s, what would have come out.
A: I don't think Paul Schrader would have been allowed to exist in the ‘40s. But yeah, it makes them such an interesting pair! Both are incredibly concerned with sex—even the first one is explicitly about the fact that Irena won't let Oliver (Kent Smith in the original, John Heard in the remake) sleep with her because of the cat curse Irena claims to be under. Paul Schrader just went further and asked "yeah but what if he DID sleep with a cat person?" and showed us the consequences. Which leads to some incredibly erotic sex scenes in the remake... when Oliver ties Irena to the bed? Oh man.
M: I'm with you.
A: The leap from the original’s quiet, restrained, implied sexuality to outright erotica is really something. Schrader turned it from a curse into a kink.
"Schrader turned it from a curse into a kink."
M: Yeah, he makes several big deviations from the original, including inventing an aggressively prominent incest subplot.
A: It's interesting that it's basically a meme now how incest is the most common porn category. Schrader was ahead of his time! He makes some solid changes, like changing Oliver’s job from a marine engineer to a zookeeper. It’s an obvious thematic fit as his job is to control animals and that ties in with his desire to be with Irena, and then domesticate Irena. The original is also much more austere, both Irena and Oliver seem to be from old money, or at least have white collar jobs, and seem very chaste. It doesn't seem like a huge surprise for Oliver that he and Irena don’t sleep together—the original is set in an almost Victorian world where nobody fucks anyway. That, contrasted to the sweaty, topless, incest New Orleans that Schrader shows us… both films definitely have sex on the mind, but they go about it very differently.
M: The original is like Irena in woman-form, carefully reserved while seething with unfulfilled sexual energy. And then the remake is Irena in cat-mode, totally unleashed, aggressive, dangerous.
A: Schrader’s ending is arguably more disturbing too. Irena willingly locks herself away from society and John Heard doesn’t seem to have a problem being her jailer. It makes for a much messier and more frightening ending. More about dominance and submission than about the mysterious other.
M: Yeah, the original ends somewhat traditionally in comparison. Irena can’t control herself any longer and is killed for her indiscretions. It’s very similar to the ending of the original The Wolfman, which came out the year before. Strange that both versions came out alongside iconic werewolf movies.
A: I suppose these films are in that vein of “controlling the animal within” stories. Werewolves, The Hulk, Jeckle and Hyde... the original certainly feels like all the characters and the society want to be distanced from our animalistic sexual instincts.
M: Speaking of sexual instincts... I’ve got to talk about Annette O'Toole. She plays Alice, Irena's rival in the remake. I’ve been crushing on her hard since she played Superman's mom in Smallville. I had no idea she was in this, and I certainly had no idea she would be topless. Her nudity in the pool scene was utterly seismic for me. It overshadowed everything else in the film. I don’t have anything constructive to add to that. I couldn’t even focus on how they were recreating that scene from the original. My brain just stopped working.
A: I spent most of the movie thinking she looked familiar! It's interesting how that pool scene is almost verbatim from the original… but it's topless.
M: Another keen adaptation.
A: There are two parts that are almost verbatim—the pool scene, and then there's the woman at the bar who approaches Irena and speaks a foreign language.
M: They also tip their hat to the bus jump scare, which was nifty.
A: Oh that's true!
M: The pool scene is the highlight of the original for me. It’s so evocative and dreamy.
A: I absolutely love both iterations of both scenes, so no complaints here.
M: Circling back to the incest! Malcolm McDowell's character is an interesting addition. He’s a very compelling presence, but he also clutters the story somewhat. He sort of externalizes what was an internal conflict in the original. Instead of Irena struggling against herself, she spends much of the remake fighting against his influence.
A: I think he’s also there so we can get some nasty gore sequences early on, before Irena has transformed.
M: Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. He's a way to see a cat person do some terrible things while letting Irena off the hook. The non-sexual highlight of the movie is him (in cat form) mauling off that zookeeper’s arm. There’s a great, horrible escalation to that scene.
A: I loved that scene and was surprised to find out the character died.
M: That’s what put it over the top for me. This guy didn’t just get his arm ripped out... he bled to death. It’s gnarly stuff. It’s interesting though that we seem to be gravitating towards talking about the remake, because I think the original is the better film. It hypnotizes you with nothing but shadows and growls. And yet the remake is such a compelling mess that it demands more of your attention.
"It hypnotizes you with nothing but shadows and growls."
A: We might differ here! I'm quite solidly on the side of the remake—but then again I love The Canyons (2013) which is pretty derided... I'm just fascinated by Schrader's raunchy side. And it's also got that ‘80s excess which gets me lately.
M: Ah, that makes sense! I’m more of a vintage horror head so I tend to gravitate towards B&W vibes. Although I too am in awe of the ‘80s excess at play. The score, with the David Bowie theme, could only have come from 1982.
A: For sure. Now, we'd be remiss to end this convo without addressing the fact that both Irenas are really hot.
M: True, that's a salient point that we missed. And they both have vaguely feline features, which is great casting on both accounts.
A: Somehow we've looped back to sexualizing cats.
M: Cat, woman, Simone Simon or Nastassja Kinski, I love Irena in any form.
A: Amen.
M: Meow!