Baby Bitches From Hell: Monstrous-Little Women in Film


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Section 3

THE MYSTICAL MOPPET

Two early and influential films--Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Innocents (1961) represent the female child, by virtue of her innocence and imagination, as particularly susceptible to communion with a spirit world. In each instance she is manipulated by a potentially dangerous female figure--a ghost and a governess respectively. Whereas Curse of the Cat People emphasizes the girl's openness to, and delight in, the supernatural, The Innocents depicts its small heroine as a sinister figure who is susceptible to hysterical attacks during which the spirit of a dead woman appears to take possession of her body.

Jacques Tourneur's, classic noir, The Curse of The Cat People (1944) might seem more of a fantasy than a horror film, but when one views it as a sequel to Cat People (1942) and considers the meaning of the "curse" of the title, it takes on an altogether sinister tone. Curse of the Cat People tells the story of Amy, a six-year old girl, who leads a solitary existence. She lives with Oliver, her father, and her mother, in a small town next to Sleepy Hollow, the legendary forest which was the setting for the horrifying story of The Headless Horseman. The forest, with its dark secret places, is represented throughout as an extended metaphor for the unconscious. Amy lives in a fantasy world where she conjures up an imaginary playmate who assumes the identity of her father's dead first wife, Irena.

Oliver and Irena's doomed love story was the focus of Cat People, made two years earlier in 1942. Believing she was descended from a race of Balkan witches, and that she transformed into a ferocious black panther during sex, Irena avoided all such encounters--even with Oliver, her husband. Cat People offers two contradictory explanations for Irena's strange behaviour: on the one hand, it suggests that Irena undergoes an actual metamorphosis; and, on the other hand, that she is simply a lonely, somewhat neurotic woman whose over-wrought imagination propels her into violent acts. (Unfortunately, the filmmakers were forced--by the studio--to insert a clear shot of a black panther, thus weakening the film's ambiguities).

Irena's terrible anxieties are initially awakened by a chance meeting with a mysterious feline woman (Elizabeth Russell) who comes up to her in a cafe, claiming to recognise her as a "sister". Their strange encounter hints also at the possibility of lesbian desire which is suggested also in two eerie night-time sequences where Irena stalks Alice, the woman Oliver marries after Irena's death. Irena's frightening behaviour is conventionally interpreted as arising from jealousy, but its expression encompasses a suggestion of sexual desire, particularly in the pool sequence where Irena--or her ghostly presence--terrorises Alice who is relaxing in the pool, enjoying a solitary dip. If Irena had been a male stalker, the sexual implications--particularly when she rips Alice's clothes--would be immediately clear. The pool scene represents a powerful expression of Irena's fear that her sexual urges will lead to the death of anyone she desires.

Curse of the Cat People 1.3 MB quicktime movie
In The Curse of the Cat People, Oliver has re-married and fathered six year-old Amy, a lonely but highly imaginative child who has much in common with the tragic Irena. They are both solitary beings who live in the world of the imagination. In the opening scene, Amy--under supervision of her kindergarten teacher--is playing with the other children in "Sleepy Hollow." The children complain that they never have any fun with Amy because she is always dreaming. Upset by the little cruelties of everyday life, Amy slaps one of the boys who accidentally crushes a butterfly. When Oliver is informed he becomes angry and agitated. "Amy has too many fantasies and too few friends," he asserts. When the teacher defends Amy, he explains that "there is something moody . . . something sickly" about her. Oliver is determined that Amy will not "lose herself in a dreamworld", and end up like Irena whose memory still haunts him. Blonde, pretty Amy represents both innocence and corruption. She is the radiant child of fairy stories who exhibits a propensity towards the dark aspects of the psyche. Caught up in a world of make-believe, Amy is not unlike Peter Pan--potentially horrific because she threatens to remain locked into a realm of daydreams, languishing forever in Never-Never Land.

Amy increasingly comes under the influence of a crazed old woman, Julia Farren, and her middle-aged daughter, Barbara who live next door. As the children run past Julia Farren's large, gloomy house, they cry out that it is "haunted" and inhabited by a "witch". Barbara is played by the same actress (Elizabeth Russell) who portrayed the mysterious cat woman in Cat People. Barbara has a strange relationship to her mother in that the old woman refuses to believe Barbara is really her daughter. Parallels are drawn between Barbara and Amy. "That woman is an imposter. She is a liar and a cheat," the demented mother cries. "My daughter, Barbara, died when she was six (Amy's age). You are an imposter." Similarly, Amy is also an imposter in the family--even her father has remarked that Irena is more like Amy's true mother. "She could almost be Irena's child," he concludes. If Barbara is also the mysterious Cat Woman from the first film (otherwise why have the same actress in both roles?) then she, like Irena, is descended from the village of Balkan witches. This means that Amy, Irena's "daughter", is also linked to the Cat women.

The old lady gives Amy a "magic ring" which she uses to call up her secret friend. Tourneur carefully avoids representing Irena in the flesh (there are only shadows and sounds) until Amy gives her a name. After catching a glimpse of Irena's photograph, Amy announces that Irena looks just like her "special friend". If anyone is responsible for conjuring up Irena, it is Oliver. Although he is fearful of the mind and its powers, he, like his daughter, lives partly in a fantasy world--he builds toy ships, and tells Amy a fanciful story about a magic letter box in the garden. He insists that one of Irena's paintings (it depicts a child and a cat lurking in the background) hang in the lounge room, and he refuses to throw out her photograph. Wanting only to please her father, Amy, in fact, brings to life the phantom of his first wife, the woman he still loves and whose memory continues to haunt the household. The tangible horrors offered by the deranged mother and daughter, living in the eerie house next door, are not nearly as threatening as those of the imagination that besiege Amy's home.

Both daughter and father are prepared to forsake the world of the living for the dead. Amy's desire to leave her parents and run away with the beautiful woman who inhabits the garden is extremely powerful and almost leads to her death. When at the end, Oliver claims that he, too, sees Irena (although he is looking at Amy), it appears that he has also given himself over to Amy's world of fantasy, and the ghost of his dead first wife, who haunts the garden.

Although Amy seems innocent, and beyond all guile, she is potentially monstrous because she signifies excess--the threatening excess of the over-fertile feminine imagination which is portrayed as potentially good and evil. While the adult may wish to follow the child, who is represented as having special access to the spiritual, the journey is not necessarily a safe one. It leads Amy into the depths of the forest where she hears the Headless Horseman galloping on his horse into the night. In terror, Amy runs into the "witch's house" where Barbara almost strangles her. In the end, Amy is saved by her imagination when she mistakes Barbara for Irena--who represents death--and calls her "my friend."

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