THE LEOPARD MAN (1943) B/W 66m dir: Jacques Tourneur

w/Dennis O'Keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell, James Bell, Margaret Landry, Abner Biberman, Tuulikki Paananen, Ben Bard

Excellent low-budget thriller from the Val Lewton stable, directed with savage poeticism by Tourneur. About a series of murders attributed to an escaped leopard.

From Joel Siegel's book about the Lewton production unit, Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror:

"The Leopard Man is a mixed effort, superb in its individual sequences and its general ambiance but uncertain in structure and lacking any deep thematic resonance. Never approaching the exquisite style and poetry of I Walked With a Zombie, it at least manages to avoid the gaucheries of dialogue and performance which disfigure Cat People, while remaining every bit as inventive and frightening in the suspense sequences.

"Both Lewton and Tourneur later disclaimed The Leopard Man , and with some justice: it is a rather straightforward mystery thriller, based on Cornell Woolrich's Black Alibi , and has little more to offer than most other works in that genre. The film's central image is, again, a fountain --- this time with a jet of water supporting a hollow ball. Although an attempt is made to give the fountain metaphorical significance (one character remarks, 'We know as little about the forces that move us and move the world around us as that empty ball...') it never assumes the highly packed, allusive presence of the St Sebastian figurehead [that appears in I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE]. The Woolrich novel was probably too conventional to please Lewton and Tourneur, too heavy in explicit bloodshed, and lacking the kind of poetic suspense they favoured in their first two efforts.

"However conventional the story may be, Lewton tells it in a curious, fragmented fashion which, though not fully successful here, anticipates the mosaic narrative style of his next feature, The Seventh Victim. The Leopard Man is unconventionally structured: it has no central protagonists but moves from person to person, action to action, in a free-flowing manner. One character is committed to prison where he hears castanets clicking outside his window. The camera picks up a castanet dancer and follows her story until another transitional device takes us to yet another character. This method of story-telling, odd when employed in a thriller, tends to distance our responses; we aren't sure why we are watching any particular character at any given time. Lewton once told Florence Mischel that transitions are no problem, that one simply needs a story hook -- an image or sound or object --- with which to 'hook into' the following scene. (Mrs. Mischel sees this as a key to Lewton's stylistic modernism --- his 'hook' is an anticipation of the jump-cut.) Unfortunately, the Woolrich material hardly merits the highly sophisticated Lewton narrative technique. ...

"The Leopard Man lacks sufficient unity and meaning to satisfy as fully as some other Lewton films, but it is none the less a superb production, stylish and richly detailed. From the opening shot --- the clatter of castanets as the camera prowls the backstage corridor of a night club --- we know that we are in the hands of a master. All that Tourneur attempts is flawlessly executed, though some of Lewton's screenplay effects --- like reflection shots of Clo-Clo [Margo's character] dancing around the fountain --- are not attempted, probably owing to a shortage of time and money. The cast could not be better: Margo dominates the film, but Isabel Jewell [Maria] and beautiful Jean Brooks [Kiki], the co-stars of The Seventh Victim , perform quite admirably.

"One can understand why Lewton and Tourneur repudiated the film. It amounts, in the long run, to little more than an exercise in sadistic voyeurism --- three innocent women dying like trapped animals. But movies, like the rest of the arts, are sometimes most memorable when they are least responsible. I saw The Leopard Man when I was eleven, and seeing it again for this book, almost twenty years later, I discovered that almost every shot was fixed in my memory. The death of the frightened child, the young girl alone in the cemetery, those shots of the dancer clicking her castanets through the dark streets --- these are artful images of fear that will long haunt those who experience them."

From the website www.attaboyclarence.com, this review of the film:

"It's not often that a movie, made almost twice my age ago, has the power to chill my blood. I do watch classic horror movies very often, at least two per week, but not with the aim of having my blood chilled. I endlessly admire their efficiency in storytelling, their full use of their sometimes smaller budgets, the familiar faces that crop up time and again. I enjoy identifying the horror tropes, so often reused, the angles used by directors such as James Whale and Roy William Neill to convey their sympathies for any given monster.

"Perhaps I'm just wired that way. To me, the horror movies of the 30s and 40s are like comfort food. It's relaxing to be in the company of one. What an oddity, this movie then, and yet what a thrilling treat to have one's expectations confounded. For here, in Jacques Tourneur's The Leopard Man in 1943, is the film in which everything was altered for the horror movie. From here on in, ironically, they weren't safe anymore.

"You'd think I'd be cautious about making such a bold statement, but I instinctively know that I am right for one very good reason. It's odd to think, but up until The Leopard Man there'd never been an actual serial killer portrayed on the screen.

"Oh, there were killers. There were even madmen, but there was always a purpose, be it revenge or jealousy, or because the act of killing would fulfill some devious plan set in motion by a cracked mind.

"What there wasn't, before this movie, was a killer who killed because the thought of putting someone to death excited on an almost sexual, sub-conscious level.

"It begins innocuously enough. In a sleepy New Mexico border town, a nightclub promoter, Jerry Manning, hires a leopard to publicise and accompany his singer, Kiki. When the leopard breaks free, the whole town is panicked. A young girl is mauled to death, and the authorities vow to track the animal down, but then a second girl is killed. Jerry soon begins to suspect that there may be an altogether more chilling presence in the town, preying upon women in the dead of night.

"The first murder is terrifying. A young girl, Teresa, constantly scolded by her mother for being lazy, is sent out to buy cornmeal. She is reluctant to do so, because she is afraid of meeting the escaped leopard, but her mother physically ejects her from the house, bolting the door behind her and vowing not to let her in until she has returned with the cornmeal.

"What follows is a masterclass in suspense, as Teresa creeps through the town's shadows, terrified of meeting the cat, only to find the store closed. She must now venture to the other side of town to buy the cornmeal. To say any more would spoil the surprises of what comes next, but I can honestly say that it's one of the most genuinely disturbing scenes in classic horror.

"You may also suppose, that such a horrifying, yet masterfully directed sequence would somehow detract from later scenes of tension, a large planet's gravity tugging away at neighbouring constellations. This isn't the case. At least two more murders come, perfectly pitched and paced, and each with their own share of emotional resonance and distinctive horror.

"The technical brilliance displayed by Jacques Tourneur is these scenes is breathtaking, and that's to say nothing of his grip on the telling of the story itself; the slow building of dread, the lengthening shadows of terror stretching like fingers over the very scenery. The characters leap from the screen; the devious Clo-Clo, the tragic Teresa.

"And what of the resolution, taking place against a ghastly procession of murmuring, hooded figures drifting slowly against a barren, nature-torn landscape, their heads bowed, candles flickering gently as the night sets in. It's here that the culprit reveals their hideous motive, that the reason for the killings, was that there wasn't a reason. Could there have been a reason more terrifying? And still, the figures trudge slowly on. The image could have been torn from the Book Of The Dead.

"The horror lingers, long after the film has ended, a pervading, heavy, nightmare of a film; the tragic fates of its victims all too resonant. It could so easily have been a run-of-the-mill quickie horror, but the source material, Cornell Woolrich's superb 'Black Alibi,' and the superlative direction from Jacques Tourneur, truly one of horror's icons, elevate The Leopard Man, in my estimation, to one of the all-time great chillers."