TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

davidcarniglia Very atmospheric horror/mystery drama. The elegant cinematography captures the old colonial feel of a small New Mexico town. The plot uncoils with quick pacing. In the best horror tradition, the monster (the leopard, that is) shows up right away.Then we get three well-connected murder scenes, each with an eerie set-up and denouement. I can't decide whether the graveyard is scarier than the tunnel under the railway bridge. The nocturnal street scene where the last victim gets it isn't bad either. Maybe the graveyard is the best because Consuelo is stuck there longer than Theresa or Clo Clo are when they're cornered.Also the graveyard has a magical quality. It seems to get bigger and more forlorn the more Consuelo explores it. The fact that she's almost rescued adds to the horror. After her death, Galbraith seems to hear her voice as he finds himself there, brooding. Poor Theresa is similarly walled-in by the confined, tomb-like passageway under the bridge. First the tumbleweed, then eyes appearing out of nothingness... The sense of a lurking menace is skillfully built out of shadow and darkness, the tell-tale castanets, even the sleek blackness of the leopard. The shift from an animal to a human threat is gradual and logical. It changes the form of the danger, but not the substance of it. At first it seems that Jerry wants to believe that the leopard isn't the killer--after the second killing anyway--only because it lessens his sense of guilt and responsibility. It's interesting that Galbraith's attempt to incriminate How-Come is nearly successful. Galbraith knows that How-Come bears some guilt for bringing the leopard to town in the first place. Strangely, Galbraith analyzes himself as he discusses with Jerry the leopard's/psychopath's likely behavior. What seemed ambiguous was Galbraith's confession. He says he "had to do something" after Theresa was killed, because "her body was broken and mangled." His response to her death is to kill two women; did he begin by killing Theresa, and then he couldn't stop killing? Or, what's more likely, he saw her just after she was killed by the leopard, and it excited him to the extent that he 'became' the leopard. The procession adds a macabre element that fittingly helps to trap Galbraith. The only thing that didn't work for me was that most of the characters were forgettable. It's too bad that Theresa was the first victim, she's more interesting than Clo-Clo, Kiki, and Maria put together. Jerry, How-Come, and even Galbraith don't add up to much either. Kiki's and Jerry's mutual "turning soft" at the end wasn't convincing. It seemed that no one cared much about Theresa until the other two victims were killed.An unusual movie, hard to categorize, but easy to enjoy. I wish that more of Cornell Wollrich's stories had been turned into films.

jadavix "The Leopard Man" is a silly plot enlivened by the direction of the master Tourneur.The story is something to do with nightclub performers who hire a leopard for their show. The leopard gets loose, and people start dying, assuming that this is the work of the beast. But is it?The filmmakers don't really draw this mystery out and make it centre stage. For one thing, the leopard doesn't look big enough to hurt anyone, so you're not really encouraged to think it may be the murderer. The movie seems more interested in the goings on behind the scenes of the nightclub, which isn't very interesting, and will seem like a distraction to most viewers.Jacques Tourneur has a way with suspenseful scenes, which enlivens a mostly pretty boring movie with a silly story. When you finally find out who the killer is, it's not shown like it's supposed to be the surprise it obviously is. It's like Tourneur could work with individual scenes, but trying to glue all the parts of this movie together into a cohesive whole was either beyond him or not worth his time.

Woodyanders An escaped leopard terrorizes a small town in New Mexico. However, stage performer Kiki Walker (a spirited and appealing portrayal by the fetching Jean Brooks) and her dashing manager Jerry Manning (a fine and likable performance by Dennis O'Keefe) suspect that something else might be responsible for the killings that have been occurring.Director Jacques Turner relates the absorbing story at a steady pace, milks plenty of nerve-rattling tension during the murder set pieces (the first one involving a little girl looked outside of her house is positively harrowing), and nicely captures the sleepy atmosphere of the poor Mexican hamlet. Cinematographer Robert De Grasse's masterful use of light and shadow further enhances the overall spooky mood. The solid acting by the capable cast qualifies as another significant asset: Brooks and O'Keefe make for personable leads, with sound support from Margo as bitchy and ambitious dancer Clo-Clo, Isabell Jewell as cynical fortune teller Maria, James Bell as friendly museum curator Dr. Galbraith, Margaret Landry as doomed teenager Teresa Delgado, and Abner Biberman as the leopard's easygoing owner Charlie How-Come. The tight 66 minute running time ensures that this picture never gets dull or overstays its welcome. Well worth seeing.

gavin6942 A seemingly tame leopard used for a publicity stunt escapes and kills a young girl, spreading panic throughout a sleepy new Mexico town.Mike Mayo says this film is "cut from the same highly stylized cloth and it isn't derivative of" Cat People. He further says the social criticism is "naive" and the film is "more mystery than true horror". I shall address these in reverse order.Yes, the film is more mystery than horror. I fully agree with that. There are some creepy moments and the one woman's finger instruments sound like a rattlesnake, which I found a bit disturbing. But really, the plot revolves around a murder and who or what committed it.Is the social criticism naive? Mayo points out how the film speaks of the poor all suffering together. I guess I would just say I did not think there was a driving critical undertone. Maybe I missed it or was not looking at it that way... but if it was naive, I think that does little to detract from the overall film.And how can I disagree with the first point? Val Lewton was a genius and Tourneur was probably his greatest director. Could one have excelled without the other? Probably. But they make quite the team when working together.Chris Fujiwara is far more praising in his critique of "Leopard Man", and I will not address his points here. But for an excellent deconstruction of the film, I do recommend his book on Tourneur.