Change Your Image
djsonovox
Reviews
The Catman of Paris (1946)
Unseen for many years, but a thrill if you're right age
This is a middling to fair movie, gamely cashing in on the popular 1940s passion for Wolfman and Cat People creature films. Lame, but it limped along anyway.
Spine-chilling horror and suspense it has little of, but be fair! When you stack this film up against other non-Val Lewton movies or non-Brit films, (think DEAD OF NIGHT) it's okay for what it attempts. The director was probably a studio hack given the task of making something cheap using standing sets and on-hand costumes to fill the double bill and not run much more than an hour, thus clearing the seats for the A picture.
Workmanlike is he best that can be said about it. A good monster, wasted.
Anticipation ran high for me in the pre-home taping/DVD days when indie TV stations surrounding the SF Bay put this in their late-night viewing logs in the papers. My appetite for it was whetted by a photo spread in Monster World or maybe FAmous Monsters, showing Bob Wilke down in a makeup chair with a week's whiskers, getting on the fingernails and greasepaint and hair and full catty dentures. He looked great as the monster. His eyes were always cat-like and a bright shiny green anyway. Recall him as the first mate to Captain Nemo (James Mason) in 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA?
Robert J. Wilke made his career primarily playing villains in Westerns and was always a solid on screen presence. More of the Catman and less palaver was called for. It would be a better film, but I liked it for what little it achieved in moments of unease and threatening shadows.
And whomever id the makeup was an ace at greasepaint and direct work, without much in the way of prosthesis.
DB Jones, Mountain View, CA