In the late 1950's and 1960's London born Barbara Kowin, better known to
the film going public as Barbara Shelley, became Hammer Horror's number one
female star and there after the leading lady of British Horror. Appearing in
such films as Blood of the Vampire
(1958), The Gorgon (1964), Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966), Rasputin, the Mad Monk (1966) and Quatermass and the Pit (1967). But
before this successful run of horror classics she starred in the remake of the
1942 Jacques Tourneur directed and Val Lewton produced film of the same name Cat People.
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| The wonderful Barbara Shelley (left). |
This 1957 update of the supernatural chiller stars Shelley as Leonora
Johnson who is instructed to return to her ancestral home by her Uncle (Ernest
Milton) where she is informed that she is the heir to the family curse which involves
being possessed by the spirit of a leopard! Neither her husband, her friends or
her ex lover psychiatrist Dr Brian Marlowe (Robert Ayres) believe in the curse
and put her ever increasingly strange behaviour down to her mental state
brought on by her husbands unfaithfulness. Dr Marlowe then commits her to a
sanatorium, will this incarceration cure her suspected insanity or is there a
lot more to the family curse?
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| A cat fight? |
Although this low budget B-movie is far from a classic it has as its
saving grace a leading lady whose convincing performance is well above the work
produced by her co-stars. The Daily Cinema called her performance ‘blood
curdling’, with Kinematograph Weekly describing it as ‘A hectic amalgam of
savagery and sex’
Best known for being script editor of the 1971 TV drama Upstairs, Downstairs, which was must see
viewing in the early part of the 1970's, and the pop revue 6.5 Special (1958) Alfred Shaughnessy directed this grand example
of British gothic cinema with ingredients of ‘erotic sex and violent horror
combined’[1] – well for 1957 anyway.
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