AWARDS AND HONORS

In 1993 Cat People was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.

Critic Reviews: CAT PEOPLE

"Lewton pictures aren't really very good, but they're so much more imaginative than most of the horror films that other producers were grinding out at the time that his ingenuity seemed practically revolutionary. Some of the sequences, such as the scare at the swimming pool, are in their own way classic." - Pauline Kael

"Paul Schrader made a much more specific version of Cat People in 1982, which I admired for its own qualities, including the use of atmospheric New Orleans locations. But the 1942 movie gets under your skin. There is something subtly alarming about the oddly mannered good-girl behavior of Simone Simon, and the unearthly detachment of Kent Smith as her husband, and the rooms and streets that look not like places but like ideas of places. And something touching about Irena, who has never had a friend, and fears she will kill the only person she loves, and is told she is insane." - Roger Ebert

"This is a weird drama of thrill-chill caliber, with developments of surprises confined to psychology and mental reactions, rather than transformation to grotesque and marauding characters for visual impact on the audiences. Picture is well-made on moderate budget outlay...Script, although hazy for the average audience in several instances, carries sufficient punch in the melodramatic sequences to hold it together in good style...[Tourneur] does a fine job with a most difficult assignment." -- Variety

"The strangely embarrassing predicament of a lady who finds herself possessed of mystical feline temptations, especially one to claw people to death, is the topic pursued at tedious and graphically unproductive length in RKO's latest little chiller, Cat People...Ladies who have such temptations--in straight horror pictures, at least--should exercise their digits a bit more freely than does Simone Simon in this film. And people who make such pictures should do so much more briskly than they have here. Cat People is a labored and obvious attempt to induce shock. And Miss Simon's cuddly little tabby would barely frighten a mouse under a chair." - The New York Times

"The Cat People is a brain-cracking story of a girl who turns cat. It is not quite so horrifying as its makers wanted it to be because Simone Simon does not give people real feline shudders." -- Time Magazine

"Storyline and plot elements don't hold up, but moments of shock and terror are undiminished in the first of producer Val Lewton's famous horror films." - Leonard Maltin, All Movie Guide

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume