This film is all about Ann Carter, the twelve year-old actress who dominates the film with her dreamy, wide-eyed performance, as a girl so enmeshed in her own dreams and visions ('the curse') that she appears to be in a state of somnambulistic trance throughout the whole film. For any connoisseur of child acting, this is a classic, and ranks with the best of the Margaret O'Brien and Hayley Mills performances. Ostensibly, this film is meant to be a sequel to 'Cat People'. Ann plays the daughter of the 'cat woman's' former husband and his girl friend, now his wife. Played by Kent Smith and Jane Randolph as before, they have now moved on and are living happily in Tarrytown, New York, where the headless horseman of American myth once rode. Whether this is meant to be a subtle attack on David Rockefeller, the headless 'master of the universe' who lives there and rides just as invisibly into every important show in town with his head under his arm, is not clear. Kent Smith's character is as obtuse and thick as ever, showing even more insensitivity towards his own daughter than he did to his former wife. Simone Simon is degraded and humiliated, after her spectacularly brilliant performance in 'Cat People', by being dragged in, clad in a ridiculous costume resembling a dress from the mediaeval period, as a wan and smiling ghost. And to add further insult to injury, she tends to be seen only in distant long shots, presumably because ghosts don't photograph well close up. The film is so ridiculous in so many ways that it is a wonder we can watch it, but watch it we do, because we loved 'Cat People' (or we wouldn't be watching this) and we can't take our eyes off the amazing child actress in her hypnotized state as she openly dreams her way through this mediocre film, thereby raising its tone to something of importance. Elizabeth Russell, who sent the shivers down so many spines when she merely said her single line in 'Cat People' (in Serbian, no less): 'My sister?', is back in force here, as the perversely ignored daughter of a dotty old gal, who is slowly going mad through loneliness, and who is tempted to kill Ann Carter. Now, who would ever do a thing like that? She thinks better of it, but not before we get rather worried. This is a must-see for Val Lewton fans, to say the least. But poor Simone Simon!
Review of The Curse of the Cat People
