The finest achievement of producer Val Lewton’s legendary RKO horror cycle, Cat People (1942) occupies a foundational place in queer film history because it mobilizes horror not as spectacle but as a grammar of deviance, repression, and embodied otherness.
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Directed by race-car driver, TV director, adventurer and Howard Hawks protegee Bruce Kessler, the film sits squarely in the late-1960s draft-dodger queer farce, and his involvement appears to have been technical and opportunistic rather than personal. This was producer Joe Solomon’s baby in keeping with his other entries in the exploitation genre such as A Small Town in Texas (1976). The surprise, however, is that the gay couple is treated with a modicum of respect.
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