Cat People

According to Carroll, horror films should contain a monster. This monster needs to follow the criteria of being fearsome and disgusting. In Cat People the monster is none other than Irena herself. Cat People starts out with Irena drawing a picture of a panther at the zoo. The other main character Oliver meets Irena and they end up falling in love and getting married. Irena warns Oliver before they get married of her problem with cats and how she fears of touching him because she is afraid of turning into a cat and hurting him. During the time of their marriage Irena tries to keep herself from turning into a cat by going to a psychiatrist. Her husband does not understand what is going on with his wife. When she stops going to the psychiatrist her husband sees this as her not wanting to help herself. He then begins to fall in love with a girl at work.

Irena's urge to turn into a cat becomes stronger and she tries to wash away the impurities by taking a bath. When her husband tells her that he wants a divorce and is in love with that other girl, Irena begins to let the cat part of her take over due to her jealousy and she seeks revenge on the girl. Irena' s husband and his lover begin to notice that it is Irena who keeps attacking them. On the other hand of the spectrum, the psychiatrist does not believe that Irena is turning into a cat and tempts her by wanting her to kiss him. She ends up kissing him, attacking him and killing him. In the end of the movie, Irena ends getting killed by the same panther from the zoo that she was drawing.



As Carroll states the monster in a horror film needs to be fearsome and disgusting. According to Mary Douglas in Carroll's book, disgust is caused by the thought of the monster as a threatening and impure presence. In Cat People Irena does not look disgusting and gross. The audience has to use there imagination of Irena turning into a cat. It is never shown of Irena turning into a cat. This creates was Mary Douglas calls cognitively threatening. At the time when Cat People came out people did not need to see Irena turning into a cat to be horrified, but today it is different. Today we have the technology to see Irena turning into a cat and we expect it in order to be horrified.

Carroll also states that the purpose of the film to be horrifying is to create an effect of art-horror. The swimming pool scene in Cat People is an example of this. This scene creates the effect causing the audience to jump and never actually seeing Irena as the cat. Carroll says their are certain steps to follow to create a monster. In Cat People fission is the step that is used. Fission is used because the monster is one thing and then turns into another thing. Irena is a human at one point and a cat at another point. Cat People is a horror movie that shows us a different type of horror, it shows how horror use to be.