Directed by Paul Schrader • 1982 • United States
Starring Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard
Paul Schrader’s kinky-stylish reworking of the 1942 Val Lewton classic transfers the action to a voodoo-spooky New Orleans, adds an incestuous undercurrent, and ups the sex and gore. Nastassja Kinski is stunning as a young woman with a unique problem: she’s the descendant of a race of people whose erotic desires turn them into man-eating leopards. John Bailey’s vivid cinematography and a synthy Giorgio Moroder score (with David Bowie on vocals) heighten the air of psychosexual unease.
Up Next in ’80s Remakes (and Their Originals!)
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Cat People
Directed by Jacques Tourneur • 1942 • United States
Starring Simone Simon, Kent SmithThe first of the horror films producer Val Lewton made for RKO Pictures redefined the genre by leaving its most frightening terrors to its audience’s imagination. Simone Simon stars as a Serbian émigré in Manha...
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Breathless
Directed by Jim McBride • 1983 • United States
Starring Richard Gere, Valérie Kaprisky, Art MetranoRemaking Jean-Luc Godard's French New Wave landmark (itself an homage to American gangster films) was surely one of the more audacious cinematic gambits of the 1980s, but director Jim McBride (DAV...
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Breathless
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • France • 1960
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel BoulangerThere was before BREATHLESS, and there was after BREATHLESS. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspi...
