Cat Girl

Cat Girl is a 1957 British horror film directed by Alfred Shaughnessy and starring Barbara Shelley, Robert Ayres, and Kay Callard. It was produced by Herbert Smith and Lou Rusoff. The film was an unofficial remake of Val Lewton's Cat People (1942). In the United States American International Pictures released Cat Girl on a double bill with The Amazing Colossal Man (1957).

This was the first of two cat-related films starring Barbara Shelley, the other being The Shadow of the Cat (1961).

Plot
Leonora Johnson is a young woman who returns to her ancestral home and is told by her uncle of her legacy – she will inherit the large ancestral home and money, but also a family curse: she will be possessed by the spirit of a leopard, as members of her family have been for centuries. Her uncle is then killed by his pet leopard, fulfilling the curse, which states that its victims must die in their 70th year. A fruitless search is made for the leopard. Leonora's husband, who had insisted on accompanying her to the house, even though she had been instructed to come alone, has clearly married Leonora for the wealth that is to come to her. He had also insisted that their friends, another couple, come with them to the house, mainly to expedite his affair with the woman, Cathy. When Leonora sees her husband and Cathy making love in the woods, she looks up and sees the leopard in a tree. The leopard then attacks and kills her husband, while Cathy runs away.

Leonora tells the police that she is a were-cat and responsible for her husband's death and that they must arrest her, but since Cathy saw Richard being attacked by the leopard, they believe Leonora is in need of medical help. Leonora's former boyfriend, Dr. Brian Marlowe is back visiting in the area. He is a psychiatrist and believes that Leonora is suffering from delusions. He asks her to admit herself to a medical facility, to which she agrees, but she senses that the leopard has followed her to London. Leonora becomes jealous of Brian's wife, whose life may now be in serious danger. Will Brian be able to help her in time to save his wife's life?

Cast

 * Barbara Shelley as Leonora Johnson
 * Robert Ayres as Dr. Brian Marlowe
 * Kay Callard as Dorothy Marlowe
 * Ernest Milton as Edmund Brandt
 * Lilly Kann as Anna
 * Jack May as Richard Johnson
 * Patricia Webster as Cathy
 * John Lee as Allan
 * Edward Harvey as doorman
 * Martin Boddey as Cafferty
 * John Watson as Roberts
 * Selma Vaz Dias as nurse

Production
The film was the first Anglo-U.S. co-production from American International Pictures. They put up $25,000 of the budget and a script by their regular writer Lou Rusoff in exchange for Western Hemisphere rights.

The script was originally entitled Wolf Girl. Shaughnessy thought the script about a were-cat was silly, so he rewrote the script to make it more of a psychological thriller wherein the lead character becomes convinced that she is transforming into a monster, but it's all really just in her mind. When the AIP executives watched the film, they were furious. Sam Arkoff wanted to know "Where is the Cat Monster?", so they hired special effects artist Paul Blaisdell to create a furry cat mask and claws (in less than 3 days) to splice into the film's finale for its U.S. release.

The cameraman shot most of this extra footage slightly out of focus, making it look really shoddy in Blaisdell's opinion. Blaisdell also was disappointed at how little footage of his cat mask actually wound up in the finished film (the shots comprised only a matter of seconds). Blaisdell took the mask and claws home with him afterwards, and used them to make some home movies with his friend Bob Burns at Blaisdell's Topanga Canyon home. The cat mask wound up being one of the "props" that got destroyed in the fiery climax of AIP's 1958 film How to Make a Monster.

Critical reception
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This film inevitably invites adverse comparison with the more successful Cat People [1942]. Nevertheless it is not a negligible minor essay in the horror genre, after a poor start. Barbara Shelley is a little heavy-handed but none the less effective as Leonora."

In British Sound Films: The Studio Years 1928–1959 David Quinlan rated the film as "average", writing: "Britains scream-queen-to-be's first taste of horror: faily silly, it has some chills."