The Leopard Man. 1943. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Written by Ardel Wray and Edward Dein. Distributed by RKO.
(Editorial note: This film was made back when "leopard" and "panther" were still interchangeable terms in the US (as they remain in some parts of the world), and both terms get used during the movie. I'll stick to "leopard" for our purposes, since it's in the title.)
I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Val Lewton was a genius. He took over the low-budget RKO horror division in the '40s, worked under tough restrictions (tight budgets, titles dictated by clueless execs, and severe length restrictions), and produced some of the best horror flicks of that era. It's one of the least-known of Lewton's films, but
The Leopard Man, the last of his films directed by the great Jacques Tourneur, is a fascinating -- if flawed -- mixture of noir and horror, with some great set pieces. In a short 65 minutes,
The Leopard Man offers sets the stage for the stalker and fear motifs that drive much of the Giallo movement and similar films like
Peeping Tom and
Maniac.
As the movie opens up, we meet Kiki, a New Mexico showgirl and the heroine of the flick. She is griping to Eloise (her confidante and a cigarette girl at the club) about Clo-Clo*, the new girl at the club, whose exotic ways (she plays castanets) seem to be winning over the locals (a mix of Native Americans, Mexican immigrants, and Latino and Caucasian Americans in a surprisingly mixed setting for the day). The club manager, Jerry, comes into the room with a leopard, scaring the bejesus out of the girls**, but he explains that Kiki can win back some of the audience if she starts her act by walking the leopard onto the stage.
Kiki takes some convincing, but agrees. However, the jealous Clo-Clo, when she sees what's happening, plays her castanets just as Kiki is coming out, and the poor cat, startled, bolts, escaping from the theatre and into the night. A police search fails to turn up the cat, and Jerry is forced to pay for the cost of the cat. The owner (a circus man) cautions that the police who are banging pans in an effort to scare the cat out of hiding, are only likely to anger it.
Clo-Clo makes some bitchy comments about the cat ("I do not need a leopard. I have talent."), and then heads home. En route, she encounters a fortune teller, who first tells her that an old man will give her money, and then draws the ace of spades, signifying bad things for Clo-Clo. The camera continues to follow -- actually stalk -- Clo-Clo, but when she exchanges greetings with Teresa, a sweet local girl, the camera switches its gaze to the younger, innocent Mexican lass.
Teresa's mother fights with the girl over the need to go to the store this late at night for corn meal, and when the daughter finally goes, we get the most intense five minutes of the movie, featuring the camera stalking Teresa every step of the way to the store itself, and then some brilliantly filmed moments in which the girl is scared by the sight of glowing eyes beneath a tunnel. We finally cut to the inside of Teresa's house, as her mother assumes she's kidding around when she pounds on the door. By the time Mrs. Delgado realizes what's happening, it's too late, and as she scrambles to get the door open, we see a pool of blood trickle underneath the door into the house
Over the next few scenes, we witness the family mourning while the town goes into a panic. Jerry and Kiki do their best to help the family (for whom they feel responsible), and we also meet a local museum curator named Galbraith who is an expert on wild animals.
Hey, want to guess who the killer in this movie is?
We get more character moments, and the next morning, we again see the camera stalking Clo-Clo (and I do want to point out that, although the camera (and thus the viewer) is clearly stalking her, there isn't the sense that the camera is inside the head of the killer that modern slashers convey). Once again, we tag out, this time to a nice maid who is shopping at the same flower vendor as Clo-Clo. That maid works for the beautiful and rich Consuelo, who is celebrating her birthday. As we follow her story, she sets up an assignation with her boyfriend in the graveyard that night. Because nothing bad ever happens in graveyards, right?
Needless to say, that night, alone in the cemetery, Consuelo meets her maker before the boyfriend shows up. We again have a chase scene, and we see a branch of a tree sway as something leaps down onto the poor girl.
We get more angst, and animal expert Galbraith explains that although wild leopards would never bother hunting humans, one that had been caged for its entire life would, because it had never learned to hunt in the wild. Thus the killing. Jerry, however, doesn't buy it. He thinks there's a human using the leopard as a pretense to commit these crimes. A quick conversation with Charlie, the circus guy who used to own the leopard, confirms that the leopard was too timid to attack humans without provocation.
Jerry brings Charlie to the museum to confront Galbraith about the latter's theory, but Galbraith manages to convince Charlie that the circus-man himself might have committed the crimes on one of his drunken benders! Charlie asks to be put in jail, just for his own safety, and the sheriff, having nothing better to do, agrees.
We cut to that evening, as we follow Clo-Clo yet again as she flirts with an older man for a while. He eventually advises her to marry a nice poor man she knows and slips her $100. Clo-Clo's trip home takes her by the fortune teller, who reminds her that the first part of her prediction has now come true. She makes it home after a brief scare, but as she kisses her sleeping daughter goodnight, she realizes that she lost the $100! She runs out searching for it, doesn't find it, and finally decides the take the old man's advice and visit her nice poor suitor. As she starts to put on her lipstick, however, a shadow falls over her, and she screams.
Some folks believe that the cat's still responsible (and hunters are brought in), but Jerry is convinced that the dropped lipstick is a sign that she was planning on seeing a man, and that he might be responsible. Although his logic is only half correct, it's enough to at least sew some doubts in the minds of the other folks. Jerry and Galbraith have a wonderful back-and-forth in which Galbraith theorizes on what such a murderer would be like, calmly going about his day-to-day business and appearing perfectly average except when he's actually killing someone.
Kiki and Jerry are ready to leave town and leave these memories behind, but when Jerry tells Kiki his theories, she insists that they stay and attempt to find out the truth. We also learn that both of them gave their shares from the caberet to the families of the victims. In a cute twist on O Henry-style irony, Jerry lies and claims to have lost his money at craps, and Kiki claims to have bought some silver from Eloise before both admit to being selfless.
Our heroes soon find out that the leopard's body has been discovered, and has been dead for weeks. Our feline is innocent (albeit dead)!
The denouement occurs when Kiki and Jerry, along with Consuelo's bereaved boyfriend, set a trap for Galbraith, finally confronting him as he admits to his guilt in the murders. Galbraith is mad, compelled to kill, and unable bring himself to stop doing it. The final confrontation involves a chase through a local religious precession into the dessert, where Conseulo's boyfriend shoots Galbraith dead.
If I didn't go extensively into a scene-by-scene description of this movie, it's not because I didn't like it or wasn't engaged. Rather, so much of what makes
The Leopard Man fascinating is in the movement of the camera and the sharp noir-esque dialogue and acting, none of which translate well when merely described. Director Tourneur does a brilliant job of undercutting audience expectations, using the camera to stalk and imply danger to Clo-Clo (and to other minor characters), then switching away without any occurrences.
The extended kills of the first two victims -- long scenes in which they are introduced, characterized, stalked, and killed -- are a direct antecedent of the Giallo movies (although without the sense of sadism that Bava and others would employ). And the use of fake scares, a tactic that the contemporary industry practically can't live without, is prevalent throughout the film (the "bus" scare is generally acknowledged as having come into its own in Tourneur's
Cat People, although Lewton generally gets credit for the concept). And few movies have made as effective use of the dark as this one. Budget was unquestionably the motivating factor, but the amount of genuine tension created in alleys, tunnels, and graveyards is striking.
And aside from the horror influence, the thematic issues of revenge and the lack of satisfaction inherent in it, as well as the death of innocents so prevalent throughout, can be found in the themes of contemporary war movies and westerns. I don't doubt that it resonated even more strongly back then, in the middle of WWII.
Lewton assembled a solid cast for this movie. Margo (who beat folks like Cher to the "only one name" shtick by decades) keeps Clo-Clo floating nicely between being a sympathetic character and being a bitch***. Leads Dennis O'Keefe and Jean Brooks have nice chemistry together, and James Bell is a solid villain. The dialogue throughout is wonderful, giving the actors lots to work with.
Mind you,
The Leopard Man is definitely a disjointed movie, with long narrative sections that seem isolated from each other, and a sense that the film could have been edited more tightly. But it's a damned fine film in its own right, and as one of the less appreciated Lewton flicks, it's one that folks should seek out.
One final note:
The Leopard Man is one of the few Lewton movies adapted from a novel, in this case one by Cornell Woolrich. The fact that few folks know who Woolrich is today is a crying shame. Hunt down his works (the few that are left in print). You won't regret it.
*Seriously. I couldn't make a name like that up.
**It's true; there were no bejesus sightings for the rest of the film.
***Although it speaks volumes about Galbraith's psychosis that he only kills Clo-Clo when she's at her most innocent and sweet. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}