Tenuously based on the same DeWitt Bodeen story as the classic Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur movie but very different indeed in its treatment, it's development and in the story itself. In fact for most of its running time all this has in common with the earlier movie is the title, (though it does keep the swimming pool sequence). The plot may be silly, (the plots of most horror films usually are), but director Paul Schrader embues it with considerable atmosphere and, with its New Orleans setting, it looks terrific, (once again Ferdinando Scarfiotti is credited as 'visual consultant').
Here Nastassja Kinski is the young woman who turns into a black panther, Malcom McDowell is her brother who does the same with very nasty results and John Heard is the zoo-keeper who falls for Kinski. Being Schrader this is much more concerned with sexuality of one kind or another than the original but it is hardly convincing and the performances are mostly terrible. Still, it rattles along in its crazy way and remains, perhaps, one of the most underrated films in the Schrader canon.
Here Nastassja Kinski is the young woman who turns into a black panther, Malcom McDowell is her brother who does the same with very nasty results and John Heard is the zoo-keeper who falls for Kinski. Being Schrader this is much more concerned with sexuality of one kind or another than the original but it is hardly convincing and the performances are mostly terrible. Still, it rattles along in its crazy way and remains, perhaps, one of the most underrated films in the Schrader canon.