Plot
Young Leonora is summoned to her ancestral home to receive her “inheritance”. Her uncle tells her that along with a considerable sum of money, her legacy includes the family curse which involves being “condemned to live a life of horror and anguish, to have the form and intellect of a man, yet the cunning and savagery and bloodlust” of a wild creature.
The woman – or rather, the leopard inside her – thus begins mowing down its victims, starting with her unfaithful husband. A psychiatrist (who also happens to be her former boyfriend) is eager to help her. Making a snap diagnosis, he convinces the poor woman to be committed to the London sanitarium where he works.
Once he’s convinced he’s found the best way to treat her poorly defined mental illness, the psychiatrist gets the bright idea to discharge his patient from the hospital and bring her home with him. Unsurprisingly, Leonora is insanely jealous of the good doctor’s wife who’s about to be in a world of hurt (and her canary doesn’t fare too well, either).
The leopard called to me from the darkness.
Critique
4.5Alfred Shaughnessy’s film could be considered the British version of “Cat People” (1942), even plagiarizing some of its scenes, but without managing to recreate the depth and appeal of the original. Certainly, the cinematography is rather elegant and doesn’t lack for a decent measure of veiled sensuality, but the overall result is vapid and derivative. After the strong visual impact of the film’s initial Gothic-style sequences, the story begins to misfire, with the plot seemingly getting lost in the sempiternal London fog.
Two-dimensional characters, hard-to-swallow motivations, a spate of ridiculous behavior (the couple making out in the dark garden despite knowing a ferocious leopard is on the loose, the so-called psychiatrist slapping Leonora while admonishing: “Get ahold of yourself!“).
The protagonist, a charming Barbara Shelley (who sleeps naked in a gloomy, freezing castle), displays signs of mental instability well before the curse inflicts her.
More Info
Quotes
- From tonight it must pass on from my blood to yours, the love of darkness, the craving for warm, raw flesh and blood...
- The leopard called to me from the darkness.
Products
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| Product name | Price |
|---|
| Nome del prodotto | Prezzo | |
|---|---|---|
 | Psycus | |
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 | Piccola enciclopedia degli ultracorpi. I B-movies inglesi degli anni Cinquanta e Sessanta (Vol. 3) |
| Product name | Price | |
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| Cat Girl |
| Nombre del producto | Precio | |
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| Cat Girl [ Origen Italiano, Ningun Idioma Espanol ] |
| Produktname | Preis |
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| Nom du produit | Prix | |
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| Psycus [Import] |
| Product name | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| psycus dvd Italian Import |