Cat People (1942)
Production Company: RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.
Released: 25 Dec 1942; New York opening: 6 Dec 1942
Produced: 28 Jul--21 Aug 1942

Producer: Val Lewton
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Writer: DeWitt Bodeen

A young Serbian woman, Irena Dubrovna, meets an American, Oliver Reed, by the panther cage at the Central Park Zoo. The two fall in love and quickly marry but Irena refuses to have any kind of intimate contact with her new husband. She fears she will turn into one of the legendary cat people of her homeland and destroy them both.

In 1930 Weird Tales published the Lewton penned short story, "The Bagheeta" in which a teenager is sent into the forest by the people of his village to kill a mythical shape-shifting cat woman.