Cat Girl

Cat Girl is a 1957 British-American horror film,[1] produced by Herbert Smith and Lou Rusoff, directed by Alfred Shaughnessy, that stars Barbara Shelley, Robert Ayres, and Kay Callard. It was an unofficial remake of Val Lewton's Cat People (1942). AIP released Cat Girl on a double bill with their 1957 film The Amazing Colossal Man.

For other uses, see Catgirl (disambiguation).
Cat Girl
Film poster
Directed byAlfred Shaughnessy
Written byLou Rusoff
Alfred Shaughnessy (rewrite)
Produced byHerbert Smith
Lou Rusoff
StarringBarbara Shelley
Robert Ayres
Kay Callard
CinematographyPeter Hennessy
Edited byJocelyn Jackson
Color processBlack and white
Production
companies
Insignia Films
Anglo Amalgamated
Distributed byAnglo Amalgamated Film Distributors
AIP
Release date
October 25, 1957
Running time
76 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

This was the first of two cat-related films starring Barbara Shelley, the other being The Shadow of the Cat (1961).[2]

Plot

Leonora Johnson (Barbara Shelley) is a woman who returns to her ancestral home and is told she will inherit money, but also that there is a family curse: being possessed by the spirit of a leopard in spite of her disbelieving psychiatrist Dr. Brian Marlowe (Robert Ayres). After she wishes her husband dead, he is found clawed to death in a park by an animal. An escaped leopard appears to be the culprit, but Leonara is convinced she is transforming into a were-cat. When the leopard is struck and killed by a car, Leonora strangely dies simultaneously.

Cast

Production

The film was the first Anglo-U.S. co-production from American International Pictures. They put up $25,000 of the budget and a script by their regular writer Lou Rusoff in exchange for Western Hemisphere rights.[3]

The script was originally entitled Wolf Girl.[4] British director Shaughnessy thought the script about a were-cat was silly, so he rewrote the script to make it more of a psychological thriller wherein the lead character becomes convinced that she is transforming into a monster, but it's all really just in her mind. When the AIP executives watched the film, they were furious. Sam Arkoff wanted to know "Where is the Cat Monster?", so they hired special effects artist Paul Blaisdell to create a furry cat mask and claws (in less than 3 days) to splice into the film's finale for its U.S. release.

Unfortunately, the cameraman shot most of this extra footage slightly out of focus, making it look really shoddy in Paul Blaisdell's opinion. Blaisdell also was disappointed at how little footage of his cat mask actually wound up in the finished film (the shots comprised only a matter of seconds). Blaisdell took the mask and claws home with him afterwards, and used them to make some home movies with his friend Bob Burns at Blaisdell's Topanga Canyon home.

References
  1. Binion, Cavett. "Cat Girl". AllMovie. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
  2. Interview with Barbara Shelley accessed 26 March 2014
  3. Mark McGee, Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures, McFarland 1996, p. 109
  4. Gary A. Smith, The American International Pictures Video Guide, McFarland 2009, p. 37
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.