Meow… Cat People seems to be one of the most talked about and best horror films ever created. By horror enthusiasts across the globe claim that this film has opened the door for different approaches to creating movies. Lewton did not have much to work with when he was given the assignment of creating the movie Cat People, so he had to work with what he had and wanted to make it as suspenseful, stimulating and realistic as possible. What better way to do this, other than barely showing the monster? Lewton did something the no one else had thought of in a genre like this, no show the creature that the whole movie was about.
The movie Cat People, is a psychological horror that depicts the life of woman whom is plagued by a “curse”; a curse that causes her to never be able to love, for if see really does shoe her love she will turn into a panther and kill her lover. Until the very end of Cat People, and even the sequel Curse of the Cat People, we still do not know for sure whether or not Irena (the cat woman) was really a shape-shifter, or if she was just crazy.
In our philosophy of horror film class we have discussed Noël Carroll’s idea of what it means to be considered a horror movie; and we have also discussed what categories he considers related to horror but do not quite qualify as horror. Cat People and Curse of the Cat People are both—according to Carroll—considered being movies in the genre of what is called the “Fantastic”. This genre means that the audience is left vacillating (the majority of the movie) between whether or not the series of events, or the creature being presented, can be explained in a naturalistic manner and/or can only be explained in a supernatural manner. The “Fantastic” genre can come in three forms pure, uncanny, and marvelous. Pure is just that, the audience is completely split between whether or not the event can be explained by science as we know it. A horror movie with a fantastic uncanny plot tends to lean a little towards the side of being realistic; and the fantastic marvelous leans towards the events or monster being supernatural. Cat People is probably considered along the lines of fantastic marvelous, but we are still not sure if Irena was just insane, since we only barely saw the monster once or twice. Curse of the Cat People is—according to Carroll—an example of pure fantastic, because it offers us a good dose of both realistic ways to look at the situation and also unrealistic ways to look at the situation.
I agree with Carroll that according to his definition of what the fantastic is and what horror is that both movies fit in some way with the realm of the fantastic. But who is to say that his definition of horror, fantastic, and other are correct? I feel that many of the films that he describes as being the fantastic are some of the best films that scare people: Cat People, Curse of the Cat People, The Innocents, and possibly The Haunting. These movies are among the greatest “horror” movies of all time yet according to the very narrow definition the Carroll provides us, none of them are horror films—there is something very wrong with that. I feel that any movie having a central freight tactic, which makes the audience feel key emotions such as: suspense, fear, freight, nausea, disgust, repulsion, etc. should be considered a horror film, and the majority of the public agrees on this; thus, we have many films categorized as horror. Movies like Saw, Halloween, and other “slasher” movies involving dismemberment and torture do not count as horror films because they do not have a true monster. I feel that if you really want to see something horrifying then pick up a newspaper and read about all the tragedies that take place, really read and understand what is happening. Most people realize, and if they don’t then they should, that the most horrifying things that occur happen in real life not in some sci-fi world. Why is it that the more real is the scarier? It could be that we know that the chances of something like that occurring to us are much more likely. I could be that we can relate more to the situation because it is more realistic. Whatever the answer may be, the proof is that something that is closer to real is more frightening—in general. As I grow older I am also getting more and more desensitized; thus, the more it takes to “scare” me. And the more and more technology and media we have the more desensitized we become as a society. People are also becoming less imaginative and require more and more details. The “slasher” movies are just horror movies with the freight level augmented.
Carroll himself said that movie of the fantastic genre are often very interesting and spark the imagination of the audience. This means that people really enjoy watching these movie movies because they make you think and they scare you in the process, the same goes for the “slasher” movies. The audience of a horror movie, more often than not wants to be frightened, they watch them film to obtain a certain emotion that is spawned from watching it. If the emotion they feel is the same or greater by watching “slasher” or “fantastic” then they should watch those. I am much more frightened by someone ripping another’s arm off than I am watching a man in a monkey suit swat at plastic (or electronically created) airplanes. And that emotion that they feel when watching a film is called horror, no matter what way you look at it. And to try and say that a movie that strikes horror in the audiences is not a true art-horror film is just ridiculous.
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