Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Alistair Olson After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

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.

AaronCapenBanner Jacque Tourneur directed this thriller about a Leopard that escapes from a nightclub after a jealous performer lets it loose to ruin the debut of a new act. The nightclub owner(played by Dennis O'Keefe) tries to find it, but it seems to be responsible for a series of brutal killings(including a young woman on her way home, the best sequence in the film) There is other evidence pointing to another guilty party, proving the Leopard's innocence. Can the leopard be found and saved in time, and is there a real "leopard man" on the prowl? Unusual film has some atmosphere but a muddled story that never makes much sense; the least of the nine horror films produced by Val Lewton.

mark.waltz There's some definite c hills to be found in this "B" thriller from Val Lewton, the horror king of the 1940's, as a series of brutal seemingly cat-like attacks occur after the presence of a leopard upsets the small town where a team of traveling players are finishing up their act. The horror is in the circumstances surrounding the victim's deaths, one where a young girl is kept out of her home by her cruel mother as danger approaches, and another set in the closed-off garden of a church. The procession of death at the end where all is revealed is truly haunting, and there are some visuals that will stick with you long afterwards.