The Curse of the Cat People ranks among the strangest films made in Hollywood during the 1940s. Upon its release in early March of 1944, reviewers struggled with its weird hybridity. Bosley Crowther concluded his unusually positive review with, “The whole conception and construction of this picture indicates an imaginative approach. Its chief fault is that it is cursed with the flavor and some of the claptrap from that ‘Cat People’ film.”

Ostensibly a sequel to the lucrative Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People delivers neither a curse nor a cat person, rendering it the rare sequel that rehashes nothing from its predecessor. Instead, the film offers the story of a sensitive child seeking a friend. Yet, three characters return from the earlier film … or do they? Jane Randolph and Kent Smith reprise their roles of Alice and Oliver, who are now married with a young daughter named Amy (Ann Carter). Simone Simon's Irena, dead at the end of Cat People, enters as Amy’s friend. But Irena's nature is uncertain. Some scholars, like David Bordwell, see Simone Simon playing the ghost of Irena returned to aid Oliver's lonely child. Others, most notably Joel Siegel, see her as purely an imaginary friend whose face Amy selected from a photograph. The film's music weighs in importantly.

In addition to its role in clarifying the film's central mystery, the music in the film situates its audience in the position of a young girl, a demographic Hollywood films rarely privileged during the studio era. By reinforcing only Amy's interiority, the film's soundtrack situates the audience in rapport with Amy.

The film's music reinforces the film's presentation of childish fantasy with great realism while presenting adult reality as thoroughly infiltrated by the fantastic. Claudia Gorbman explains that music in horror and other fantasy genres normally serves to break down an audience's defenses against irrational forces. Here music aids in revealing the irrational deeply ingrained in the adult world of “logic, everyday reality, and control,” while also painting the fantastical inner world of childhood.

“Universalizing” Horror at RKO

Before turning to music for some guidance in understanding this unusual film, we visit how it came to be. RKO formed the Lewton unit to compete with Universal Pictures’ horror cycle.