The Leopard Man 1943)

The Leopard Man (1943)

The agent of a desperate performance artist gets the big idea of having her walk out during an act with a leopard while another performer does the cha-cha. The rival freaks out the leopard who scats into the street from the club with the local authorities on the alert.

While Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie duel for supremacy in regards to which film is at the top of the Val Lewton hierarchy, The Leopard Man, to me, has the very best scene of all of the productions. Every film in the list has some exceptional moments that really leave a mark, but the horrifying death of a teenager thanks to a cruel mother (who obviously mistreated her during her formative years; the abuse is obvious from the word go) shook me to the core. In actuality, it was so potent, the rest of the film never could quite measure up. That happens, you know, in the movies. A movie hits so hard early that the rest of it just can’t quite equal its power. The teenage girl is so frightened. She has reason to be. The mother, more concerned about her husband’s reaction to no cornmeal (probably abusive to the wife with the mother’s torment trickled down to her daughter), could care less how scared her daughter is. Even latching the door, shooing her out the house with a broom handle (!), the mother will force her own child outside to get it regardless of the leopard threat. When the daughter returns home (the whole sequence is a masterclass of building, mounting terror (it plays off that innate fear that drives us to walk faster when trekking home in the dark; the dark, wind, shadows and sounds amplify thanks to our imagination’s latent dread)), begging to be let in the house, and an attack (presumably by the leopard) occurs. The daughter’s voice turns to silence, and blood flow under the door indicates the results of an uncaring mother with little regard for a teen girl’s safety...that is until that moment really arises and she realizes her mistake, even if it was far too late to salvage the situation.

We go on and on—us Val Lewton fans—about the glorious use of the dark; what lies in the dark that could reach out and attack at any moment? I think The Leopard Man is such an example. When Clo-Clo is walking home after sending off the leopard to leave town (for the most part) unnerved, we see figures emerge ever so slightly hanging out (or in one instance, making out) in street corners (I love this one moment where a fortuneteller is in a booth and all we see are her hands requesting Clo-Clo to “pick a card”), and it tells me that a threat could just appear from the dark and snatch her life away. Something about the empty town streets and the uncomfortable silence...The Leopard Man really gets that right.

A bridge is present on the daughter’s way home (she must go clear across town in order to get the cornmeal), and she looks into the darkness underneath it wondering if that damn leopard could be somewhere ready to strike. It is all there on her face…why wouldn’t it be? While in the store, the shopkeeper remembers how afraid of the dark she was. She asks, “What could happen to me?” Something does. Fate dealt her a bad hand this night. And when she goes towards the bridge underneath, the simplest effect imaginable produces chilling results…eyes are seen and that’s it. All we need to know is that perhaps the missing leopard is right there in the dark and this poor girl could be victim to it. Cornmeal…seems so meaningless, doesn’t it? Compared to the life of a kid.

Not just the eyes are a great trick to set up the inevitable doom of the victim, but as she gradually walks underneath the bridge so she can get home, a train passes above, with its roaring across the tracks and a horn that blows stirring up her anxiety even more. Not a great deal of special effects. No bombastic funds bled from the studio. No elaborate studio machinations that would flood the producers/director with whatever they need to pull off a scene of any significant magnitude. Simply have two lights mimicking the eyes of a leopard shining from the dark, and a little later a mock train buzzing past from above. A little light and sound, encouraged by that intimidating dark, can work wonders if you have a terrific director (Jacques Tourneur, one of those greats finally getting the respect he deserved so long ago) and producer (Lewton, knowing just how to take the little given him and improve upon it substantially) under the helm. What caps the scene is the girl banging on the door, her mom not taking her seriously, and a final plea, “If you love me, let me in.” The latch doesn’t budge despite a log slam across it. Mama is now alarmed but the reaction is too little, too late. The blood doesn’t lie…a daughter is taken; carelessness, disregard, and an unnecessary death.

There’s some delicious foreshadowing in this movie. No matter how she deals the cards to determine the fate of Clo-Clo the death card keeps popping up time and again. Clo-Clo considers it all (or at least she leads the fortuneteller to believe) nonsense, but the film seems to foretell a not-so-promising future for her.

At the heart of the film is the sad idea that a publicity stunt could cause such a wave of fear in a town. As long as the leopard is not caught, the likeliness of more death is assured.

While not quite as gutwrenching as the first kill scene, the second scene has that same type of helpless knowing inevitability as the teen girl with her cornmeal as night fell. Consuelo is head over heels, comes from a family of wealth, and accomplishes getting her mother to let her “visit papa’s grave” which was, in actuality, a reason to rendezvous with her boyfriend. Accidentally locked into the cemetery by the caretaker while waiting for her Raoul, Consuelo scurries about trying to find another exit. She hears someone on the other side of the stone wall, shouts, and gets his attention. “It’s only a matter of minutes.” She waits as he goes to find a ladder. She looks upward at a rustling in a tree overreaching the wall, and meets her doom. This scene further established that feeling of “no escape” and that exercise in futility trying to divert what will be coming next. Much like the teen girl before her, Consuelo was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the mother hadn’t kicked her daughter out and had only Consuelo been kept inside by her mother…two ends of the spectrum, but the same result.

Clo-Clo (also known as Gabriella) has a daughter and works her charms on any man or audience that might provide for her family (including her mom). She scores a $100 bill from some fatcat she impresses in a night club, loses it in the darkened, empty street somewhere in town on her way home, returns after making it safely home to retrieve it and meets her maker. During the trip she makes one last stop at the fortuneteller’s shop. She had been told she’d make some money from a wealthy man but the death card kept coming up to ruin her chances of long-term solution to her money troubles (a rich man). She recognizes someone, puts on her lipstick, and cries out right before her death.

An arriving zoologist named Gailbraith is opening a museum he plans to be curator of and takes an interest in the case of the “leopard slayings”, becoming a source of conversation with Jerry, the agent. Jerry and Kiki, his client (the two eventually admit love for each other), decide to find the killer of the second and third victims in town. The leopard is no doubt the killer of the teen girl, but her crime scene just might have inspired someone to engage in his psychotic desires. When the leopard is found dead and skinned, the idea that some human beast is out there is rather disconcerting. Jerry and Kiki plan to do something about it. Jerry will enlist the aid of Consuelo’s boyfriend, Raoul.

There’s a key admission to the crimes and the actor’s face is quite creepy mainly because you can see him reliving those two murders with an almost psychopathic delight. Raoul wasn’t about to allow him to continue relishing the kill of Consuelo, though.

Val Lewton’s films often had titles that seemed to indicate one thing but actually mean something completely different. While the title might indicate some silly high-camp B-movie about a Leopard-Man creature, instead it talks of a killer imitating a leopard after seeing the wreckage of the girl after her fateful encounter with the real animal. That these films are classy, sophisticated, highly intelligent, and well thought out movies, directed with flair and skill, is why Val Lewton is synonymous with excellence. The Leopard Man might not necessarily have the same standing in classic horror fans’ eyes and hearts as Cat People, but the same visual noirish aesthetics, elegance in style, and attention to how certain characters attempt to atone for mistakes of the past (and some are affected by the past regardless of their involvement with an event or series of events) are all here and accounted for. To me, it deserves more recognition…this is just the case of its being in such a prestigious group of heralded masterpieces; some good ones—dare I say it—lie in wait in the shadows to be recognized.