The Leopard Man (1943)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
When a leopard escapes during a publicity stunt, it triggers a series of murders.
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What critics compared The Leopard Man to
In league with recent items by Jennifer Kent and Ari Aster, James, like Rose Glass and Romola Garai, has concocted an art-house mood piece which recalls the 1940s era of Val-Lewton films, particularly those B-pictures directed by Jacques Tourneur, like Cat People (1942) or The Leopard Man (1943), which were predicated on horrific flights of fancy but depended upon imbalance and unease through the power of suggestion and the playful teasing of troubling imagery.
He goes the old-school trail blazed in the 1940s by Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man), barely showing the aliens at all, instead focusing on sounds, lights and shadows.
One needs only to listen to Friedkin’s superb analysis of The Leopard Man on the DVD commentary track of Warner Home Video’s legendary box set, The Val Lewton Collection, to find corroboration of this influence (in addition to Friedkin’s early beginnings in news, public affairs and documentary).
Woolrich has become a cult figure in his own right having penned the stories that inspired such films as Val Lewton's The Leopard Man (1943), and Francois Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black (1968) and Mississippi Mermaid (1969).