My dad wasn't a fan of cats so this one is kind of funny.
When I was growing up, we kids would ask why we didn't get a cat and our mother often told us our Dad was allergic to cats.
He wasn't.
But this shut down our pesky questions about getting a cat, plus dogs are better!
Oh yeah, the movie. This was in a box set of 1940s RKO horror/thrillers so I'm not 100% sure that Dad was a fan of this movie but it is actually decent for what it is.
This was made in the period when the RKO studio changed management at the same time as they kicked out Orson Welles and ruined one of his films (The Magnificent Ambersons); going internally with the motto, "showmanship instead of genius". The producer Val Lewton was tasked with making a series of low budget thrillers and horror movies at this time at the studio. It's a happy coincidence that many of these films, including this one, often transcended their quick, cheap production values.
The performances are generally good with the French across Simone Simon being the standout with a memorable, eccentric take as the cursed Cat Woman. The film has some great photography which really makes the most of the limited sets and really sets the weird and creepy atmosphere for the movie. At 73 minutes, it's also very tightly paced. There is also some aspects of psychology that work reasonably well here. Hollywood discovered psychotherapy in the 1940s and often exploited it as a silly gimmick. The psychologist character is not very sympathetic here and the subject is definitely treated with skepticism (Ebert described it as "The Vincent Price school of psychology"). Even though the balance between human psychology and the supernatural tips in favor of the Cats, there is some interesting human nature gold to be mined within the film (sexual repression perhaps?).
The movie was very influential and worth watching for sure. I watched this on a DVD which looked OK; Criterion has a blu ray for this one which is probably much better.
Roger Ebert wrote a good essay for this movie in his Great Movies collection:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-cat-people-1942
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