The Leopard Man (1943)

Director:

Jacques Tourneur

Writers:

Cornell Woolrich (novel)
Ardel Wray (screenplay)

Release Date:

8 May 1943 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

Women Alone the Victims of Strange, Savage Killer!

Plot:

At the encouragement of her manager, a nightclub performer in New Mexico (Kiki Walker) takes a leashed leopard into the club as a publicity gimmick...

Plot Keywords:

Leopard | New Mexico | Nightclub | Coroner | Gunfire

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Dennis O'Keefe	...	Jerry Manning
Margo	...	Clo-Clo
Jean Brooks	...	Kiki Walker
Isabel Jewell	...	Maria - Fortune Teller
James Bell	...	Dr. Galbraith
Margaret Landry	...	Teresa Delgado
Abner Biberman	...	Charlie How-Come
Tuulikki Paananen	...	Consuelo Contreras (as Tula Parma)
Ben Bard	...	Roblos - the Police Chief

Runtime:

66 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:TV-PG (TV rating) | USA:Approved (PCA #9179)

Filming Locations:

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

There are several unidentified musical pieces used during the film including an unusual birthday song sung acapella to Consuela,

Goofs:

Audio/visual unsynchronized: In a few scenes, Clo-Clo uses her castanets to augment her conversation, but the sound she produces by using only one castanet is actually the sound of two castanets.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Kiki Walker: It may sound like music to her. I can do better with my teeth in a cold shower.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007) (TV)

I loved this one!

Well, for the most part, anyway. In a rural part of New Mexico, actress Kiki Walker is competing for attention with a local castanets dancer. Kiki's manager brings her a leopard on a leash so she can show the dancer up during her performance. Her rival one-ups her by snapping the castanets right in the leopard's face, which drives it wild. It breaks free from its mistress' grasp. As it flees from the night club, a waiter raises his hand: three bloody claw-marks from trying to stop the wild beast. The meat of the film is made up mostly from three tragedies resulting from the leopard - or do they? Okay, so the "or do they?" part isn't great, but those three tragedies are three of the best sequences in film history, no doubt. The first concerns a young girl forced by her mother to buy cornmeal in the middle of the night. Her younger brother meanly teases her by making leopard-shaped shadow puppets on the wall. The second involves a young girl who has gone to the graveyard to put flowers on her mother's grave, and also to meet with her lover. When she doesn't find him there, she becomes depressed and doesn't hear the groundskeeper's warning that he is locking the gate. The third happens to the castanet player, whose fortune teller turns up the ace of spades for her several times in a row without fail. An expert expresses the belief that the leopard could not have caused all of these events, so the film becomes, unfortunately, a whodunit. The answer is obvious immediately, even if it's not believable. Fortunately, the direction is so excellent, as well as the set pieces, that even with such a weak solution, the film is a near-masterpiece. 9/10.