It Prowls in the Moonlight Dark

I've written extensively on Tourneur's "The Leopard Man" (1943) for the blog--both October 2013, then four years later in 2017--so it's sort of hard to elaborate much further, but I will close some thoughts on this film. This is very much at it's best during those dreaded moonlight walks. There's so much dark. Those town sidewalks, stores barely lit, cemetery behind a wall, shaking branches on trees, the bridge with its reflecting puddles and rattling loud train overhead, the castanets dancer looking for her big break, the cornmeal teenage girl seeing glowing eyes as she races home to mother's locked door, empty streets and the disquiet of silence as the locals are in their homes as danger is free to present itself. The little black leopard accidentally loosed with ladies, from teenage to young engaged to a little older single mother, seemingly not all selected  at random. Those unfortunately part of the botched act, the publicity agent and his struggling performer desperate to scrape up small profit from customers roundabout, in Mexico far from bigger acts in Chicago, become involved out of guilt obviously. How do they truly catch a killer who used the leopard as a cover for murder? While I think this is a peg below the upper echelon of Lewton's RKO output, mainly because the story isn't quite as strong and the reasons the killer used to commit his murders after staring at the teen girl's mangled leopard attack body is a bit of a cop-out (the killer does make a case for seeing something traumatic and being so taken by it he feels this unexpected impulse to mutilate as the leopard did, but I dunno... despite the actor really getting the psychopathy across, it's just so soon to pick up where the leopard left off), "The Leopard Man" does have those night setpieces where it does seem the wrong place at the wrong time scenario plays out for victims of circumstances just so damned effective. And the running time is brief...maybe too brief for my liking. I still think the lead characters, Manning and Kiki, are weak links, neither all that interesting. Margo as Clo-Clo, though, is probably my favorite act of the film. But this still has my favorite setpiece of all Lewton's productions and Tourneur's film resume besides a couple in "Cat People"...the teen girl's death is just an absolute triumph of gulp-in-the-throat suspense and preventable tragedy.