Although it is clearly a rip-off of the Val Lewton classic "Cat People," director Alfred Shaughnessy's "Cat Girl" is reasonably entertaining nonsense. Scenarist Lou Rusoff specialized in drive-in movie fare. He penned "The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues" (1955), "Day the World Ended" (1955), "It Conquered the World" (1956), and "The She-Creature." He appropriates the venerable family curse premise for "Cat Girl." Our seductive heroine, Leonora Johnson - née Brandt (Barbara Shelly of "Village of the Damned"), finds herself returning to the countryside family mansion. Leonora's unhinged, white-haired uncle Edmund Brandt (Ernest Milton of "The Scarlet Pimpernel") bade her come home, so she can inherit the 700-year-old Brandts' curse. He has a plethora of stuffed cats everywhere. Moreover, he keeps a live spotted leopard in a cage to do his murderous bidding. Uncle Brandt warns Leonora tht she cannot have children because she will pass the curse along to them. Edmund reveals to her that occasionally, her soul will occupy a leopard's body and she will experience a savage blood lust and want to kill either humans or animals for the sheer passion of it. Mind you, Leonora has married to Richard Johnson (Jack May of "The Bounty"), but the marriage is already cracking up. Her philandering husband Richard has dragged along another married couple, Allan (John Lee of "Warship") and Cathy (Paddy Webster of "Breakaway") and they accompany them to the Brandi estate. Leonora's husband is a fool and Leonora married him only because she lose the love of her life an American psychiatrist, Dr. Brian Marlowe (Robert Ayres of "Heroes of the Telemark"), to a rival Dorothy (Kay Callard of "The Mailbag Robbery") who is afraid of her. Predictably, Leonora behaves like a lunatic, but she isn't hallucinating. She really shares the psyche of the leopard and stalks her prey. She has her eyes set on Dorothy. Like the Simone Simon character in Jacques Tourneur's "Cat People," Leonora frightens a canary in a bird cage to death. Later, clad in a striking black outfit, Leonora stalks Dorothy through darkened London streets near the waterfront. Mind you, as professional as Shaughnessy's helming is, "Cat Girl" is inferior compared with "Cat People" (1942) and sometimes seems campy. The transformation scenes consist of Leonora's hands time lapsing into furry mittens. Of course, Dr. Marlowe thinks she is nothing more than neurotic and puts her into observation at an asylum for a couple of night before he springs her for dinner with his wife. Credit Shaughnessy for preserving some ambiguity and "Cat Girl" is more often a respectable rehash that has the good sense to imitate one of the premiere scenes from "Cat People." Barbara Shelly is terrific, and "Cat Girl" is tolerable.
