R'LYEH REVIEW

Issue 006

copyright © 1982 by Robert M. Price
reprinted by permission of Robert M. Price

Cat People
Directed by Paul Schrader
Screen play by Alan Ormsby

(Reviewed by C. J. Henderson)

"Previously, I've made films about daydreams; this is my first film about nightdreams," says director Paul Schrader. "It's about what goes on when the lights go out --- the unconscious world inhabited by erotic fantasies, and what Cocteau called the 'sacred monsters'." Actually, Schrader is not over selling his latest picture with this statement, nor when he says that it is "a film of mystery, of magic, and of myth."

Cat People is a bloody, suspenseful, frightening, and interestingly unpredictable movie which centers around the sexual coming-of-age of young Irena Gallier (Nastassia Kinski). If you can accept the premise that a female figure of such obvious sensual allure as Kinski hasn't been brought to "the bridge of sexuality" (as Universal's press department puts it) by the time the film takes place, then you will have no trouble with the rest of it.

The extraordinary power of the picture rests in the story line's total acceptance of a realm of the impossible. Women, sacrificed to black leopards over the years by a native tribe, somehow become the massive animals' bed partners rather than their blue plate specials. This spawns a race of "cat people", shape-changers who can only mate with their own kind. If they do, everything is fine. If they seek love elsewhere, however, they transform into black leopards, unable to regain human form until they have killed someone.

The plot harks back to the worst of the B-movie days of Hollywood and, in truth, it is the stuff of pot-boiler romance. (In fact it's a remake of the old Curse of the Cat People.) What makes it as dynamically intense as it is, is the seriousness with which it has been made. "It's totally different from the street level films that I've been involved with before," says Schrader.

The only thing Cat People shares with other of the director's projects, such as Blue Collar, Hardcore, or Rolling Thunder, is the harsh bluntness with which scenes are hurled at the audience. Schrader is not known for pulling punches; his screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull proved that. But, as he insists, Cat People is a totally new kind of film for him. It is moody in a surreal, ethereal way; Giorgio Moroder's music is hauntingly disconcerting, helping to focus the audience's terror more sharply. The tension maintained in the film is so keenly orchestrated that the audience actually does not know if Irena is a member of the ancient cult of cat people or not. They don't want her to be; there is no reason for her life to be so cruelly ruined by fate. And yet the evidence begins to mount from the opening of the picture, as each avenue of escape is cut off for the young woman, and her destiny begins to close in.

Although a remake of the 1942 RKO thriller, it is by far its own film, owing very little to its predecessor. There are three reasons for this. The first is the special effects. The animal training, the stop-frame animation, and a dozen other facets were pulled together into one of the neatest packages ever. The human-into-cat transformation which takes place on the screen is devastatingly effective.

Second, credit must go to Schrader. In picking his crew, his presentation style, and his locations ("When dealing with the fantastic," says Schrader, "you need a place where people would accept it."), he has atoned in part for some of his past embarrassments such as Old Boyfriends and American Gigolo.

The third and final reason for Cat People's excellence is an actress named Nastassia Kinski. She moves through her part as if she had studied it for years. There is not a trace of posing on the screen; she is Irena. In her second American picture, the young European has given her best performance so far, and guaranteed herself years of work to come.

Unfortunately, quality does not mean dollars. Although the film opened to sensational reviews across the country, it has not proved to be a box office smash. The main reason is that the film is too hard-hitting, too disturbing. It is an attack on middle-American, Moral Majority head-in-a-box values, one which points a slyly disguised, and yet fairly obvious wagging finger at the institution of marriage and ideals such as "first love" and monogamy. In some ways too subtle for its own good. Cat People has proved to be too much of a shock for American audiences.

Whatever the case, Cat People is still an excellent film, one well worth the time, the $5 (or whatever they charge in your neck of the woods), and the risk you run of being branded by your local congregation as a blasphemer, devil-worshiper, or gods-know-what-else if you're seen coming out of the theater.

The City of the Singing Flame
Clark Ashton Smith
Pocket Books, 1981, $2.95

As It Is Written
Clark Ashton Smith
Donald M. Grant, 1982, $20.00

(Reviewed by Marc A. Cerasini)

Clark Ashton Smith, colleague, correspondent and contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, has never enjoyed a mass market renaissance like that of these latter two Weird Tales regulars. Though in many ways his poetry is better than Howard's, his prose often more genuinely horrifying than Lovecraft's, he has never garnered the following that makes REH and HPL almost household words today.

Briefly, in the late sixties and early seventies, due mainly to the efforts of Lin Carter and the Adult Fantasy Series from Ballantine Books, several of Smith's story cycles saw print in book form. The series didn't last, however, and the books quickly faded from the stands. In the United States, for the last ten years, Smith's prose has been virtually unobtainable. This has now changed.

Pocket Books has just published a collection of Smith's prose under the titfe The City of the Singing Flame. The book contains small samplings from many of Smith's story cycles, Poseidonis, Hyperborea, Xiccarph, and my personal favorite, the Zothique cycle. According to the cover blurb, this collection is only the first of a series of Smith's work to come from Pocket . . . we can only hope. I recommend this volume as a perfect introduction to Clark Ashton Smith.

The publication of As It Is Written is even more of an event to the many fans of Smith. Touted as one of the earliest imaginative tales to spring from Smith's pen, it is one of a cycle of Far Eastern adventures he experimented with, similar in style to his story "The Raja and the Tiger". Less complex than most of his later stories such as those set in Poseidonis or Zothique, it nevertheless lacks none of the scintillating style that is the hallmark of Smith's best fiction.

As It Is Written is even more interesting as a literary detective story than as fiction. The long prologue outlines the process of discovery and investigation that led to establishing the authenticity and authorship of the story. After reading the tale, anyone who knows CAS's work will have no doubts about the authorship; indeed, As It Is Written is pure Clark Ashton Smith.

Without giving away the plot, the story is set in an unspecified past and centers on the plight of a young man who has offended a local monarch and is fleeing from his army. His flight leads him into a mysterious jungle where he encounters headhunters, a slavegirl and her master, proto-humans, and a lost city. Unlike most of Smith's later fantasies, this story even has a "happy ending". Also notable is the youthful exuberance of the tale, something lacking in his later work, which is filled with a mood of decadence and decay.

As It Is Written is a delightful example of the early Smith. Not so delightful is the format of the book. In the past Donald M. Grant has published many fine, handsomely illustrated books --- but As It Is Written is not one of them. The illustrations in this volume are totally uninspired, banal in fact. The dust cover is unmemorable and unattractive. Worst of all, the book is clearly overpriced. The $20 pricetag is too much for a short story, no matter who wrote it or how long it has been lost. What we are paying for, I assume, is the packaging, which in this case is not worth it. Please, Mr. Grant, remember that only a few years ago, your beautiful third edition of Red Shadows illustrated by Jeff Jones, was only $20, and it was three times the size, and three times as attractive, and had over a dozen stories. Inflation is bad, but not that bad. At the risk of sounding miserly, I don't mind paying $20 for a good book, but not for one short story and some lousy illos.