By Hank Reineke
We film collectors are a spoiled lot: and, yes, I include
myself in that assessment. When Australian
video label Imprint first announced their seminal Silver Screams Cinema collection in 2021, I was ecstatic. Though the now defunct U.S. based Olive Films
had already given us Blu-rays of three titles soon-to-be featured on the
Imprint set (Return of the Ape Man
(Monogram, 1944) She Devil (1957) and
The Vampire’s Ghost (Republic, 1945),
it was the Aussie’s inclusion of several long-neglected films from the vault of
Republic Pictures - Valley of the Zombies
(1946), The Phantom Speaks (1945) and
The Lady and the Monster (1944) -
that compelled one to pre-order.
The Imprint set contained almost every title a fan of
Republic’s horror-mystery offerings might desire… with one notable
exception. Where was Lesley Selander’s The Catman of Paris (1946)? It was the
one Republic horror flick I had been wishing on the longest. Decades ago I gave up hope of ever seeing any
sort of legitimate home video issue. So I sought out the serviceable – if scratchy
and hazy - gray-market bootleg long making the rounds on the collector’s market. So the exclusion of The Catman of Paris from Imprint’s otherwise magnificent Silver Screams set was a bit
frustrating.
So it was with great anticipation when Imprint’s
single-disc Blu-ray of The Catman of
Paris recently arrived. I’m pleased
to report that the release not only looks great but also arrives with a couple
of bonus features. But while this film’s
arrival on Blu-ray brings with it a satisfying sense of closure, I think it’s best
to acknowledge that The Catman of Paris
is by no means a riveting lost classic of horror cinema. Though the film holds a certain charm in my personal
nostalgia bank, The Catman of Paris often
plods along for most of its hour or so running time. But I’m still a fan.
Republic Pictures was, of course - unfairly, in my mind –
deemed a Hollywood “Poverty Row” studio. But the production values of the studio were often of high-caliber
despite meager budgets, the studio producing more than a thousand features and
serials from its inception in 1935. Though associated with Monogram Pictures – a purveyor of a number of
1940s low-rent horror and mystery pictures (which often featured the likes of
genre stars Bela Lugosi, George Zucco, Lionel Atwill and John Carradine),
Republic was late in getting on the exploitative horror-film train. I suppose it can be argued that they nearly missed
the train entirely. The studio only really
began to test the horror-picture market when public interest in such fare was clearly
on the wane.
But the studio’s first horror pic The Lady and the Monster (1944), featuring Erich von Stroheim as a cold
and humorless mad scientist, did well enough for the studio to greenlight a
double-dose of new horror in 1945: The Vampire’s Ghost and The Phantom Speaks – two films which
we’ll get to in a moment. Generally
speaking, the Republic horrors were of similar construct to Monogram’s. But unlike the Monogram films – which have
been mostly available over the years on home video due to their public domain
status – the Republic horror pics have been, until recently, almost entirely commercially
inaccessible to students of the genre.
It’s possible the Republic horror pics have been glossed
over due to the fact that, unlike the studio’s western film counterparts – which
featured such star-spangled stars as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and John Wayne –
their horror pics offered no similar
marquee attraction. Perhaps if the
Republic horror and mysteries features offered such boogeymen as Lugosi or Boris
Karloff there might have been more of a commercial interest in getting these
out to fans and collectors. But
Paramount Pictures, the company that ultimately absorbed the Republic catalog,
seemed mostly disinterested in making available that studio’s horror film efforts.
To be fair, Republic wasn’t Universal: there actually wasn’t
a great deal of true “horrors” to choose from. In 1999, film historian Tom Weaver examined some of the Republic titles
in his tome Poverty Row Horrors!:
Monogram, PRC, and Republic Horror Films of the Forties (MacFarland). A decade- and -a -half later author Brian McFadden
published his Republic Horrors: The
Serial Studio’s Chillers. Both books
were welcome additions to the film scholar’s personal libraries. But while McFadden’s effort seemed to promise
a deeper-dive into the Republic’s long-neglected horror catalog, it mostly reminded
readers that the studio actually released very few true horror pictures during the Golden Age of the 1940s. Of the ten films chosen for examination by McFadden,
only five could justify being classified as genuine “horrors.” The remaining five titles selected were simply
mysteries with woven eerie elements.
But if Universal’s reign as the preeminent horror-movie
studio was beginning to wind down by the mid-1940s, Republic’s was just
beginning to rev up. In early May of
1945, the Los Angeles Times reported
that executives at Republic Pictures, “encouraged by the current success of The Vampire’s Ghost and The Phantom Speaks,” were already planning
a pair of thrillers of similar design. Under the watchful eye of producer William O’ Sullivan, Republic’s
newest horror pics, titled The Catman of
Paris and The Valley of the Zombies,
was to “be sold to exhibitors as a pair.”
Associate producer Marek M. Libkov told the Hollywood Reporter that their newest, The Catman of Paris, would have a
provisional start date of September 20, 1945 with casting to “start
immediately.” In fact, most of the
principal casting was already in
place by early September, though casting notices for small roles were still being
announced as late as October 5. It was also
later reported that the film’s start date would be pushed to September 22. The film’s presumed co-feature – Phil Ford’s Valley of the Zombies – was already just
shy of two weeks into production with production on The Catman of Paris set to follow immediately on its heels. But even the revised start date of September
22 is in doubt. On September 24, 1945,
the Los Angeles Times noted
production on Lesley Selander’s The
Catman of Paris was, at long last, to start “today at Republic.”
It’s of some interest that the two primary cast members
of The Catman of Paris, Carl Esmond
and Lenore Aubert, were both born in Vienna, Austria. Though neither had ever appeared in a horror
film, both already would share near-miss flirtations with real-life
horrors. Esmond left for the U.S. as
early as 1938 at the behest of MGM’s Louis B. Mayer. The actor had been performing with a touring
company in London when Nazi troops swept into Austria in March of 1938. Esmond reflected to Hollywood scribe Maxine
Garrison that Mayer dangled an MGM contract before him, warning ‘You would be
foolish not to come [to America]. Europe
will be lost in war before long.” Esmond
admitted, “I had not thought of it that way, but he was right.”
Aubert too left Vienna, choosing travel to Paris. But with German troops already occupying the
City of Light, the actress also made the decision to immigrate to America. (Ironically, Aubert’s first screen credit was
for a performance as a villainous Nazi spy for Samuel Goldwyn’s They Got Me Covered (1943), an early Bob
Hope and Dorothy Lamour comedy). Though
not a household name to most cinephiles, the darkly beautiful Aubert is likely
best remembered for her performance as the sinister Dr. Mornay in the
time-tested Universal classic Abbott and
Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
The Hollywood trades were reporting a lot of activity on
the Republic Studios lot that first week of October of 1945… but most interest
was fixed on producer-director Frank Borsage’s ambitious and expensive Technicolor
effort Concerto. But a wandering journalist noted that only
“two stages away,” Republic’s dual monochrome horror pics, The Catman of Paris and Valley
of the Zombies, were being shot concurrently for a provisional
double-feature release. “On both sets,
the visitor must have nerves of steel,” it was reported, “to withstand sudden
appearances of perambulating cat people and corpses.”
By Thursday, October 11, 1945, the Hollywood Reporter noted that production on The Catman of Paris had wrapped on the night previous, when
“final exterior scenes were filmed on the studio’s back lot.” The report also indicated
that co-feature Valley of the Zombies
had finished shooting a mere “one day before Republic started rolling Selander’s
picture.” If true, the earlier reportage
of dual-picture sightings of “perambulating cat people and corpses” was little
more than promotional ballyhoo.
So who was this sinister cinematic Catman of Paris? Parisian police detectives are of the belief
that it’s none other than the best-selling, dashingly handsome French novelist
Charles Regnier (Carl Esmond). The
popular-selling author has recently returned to Paris following two years of
international travel – including a possibly fateful visit to the tropics. Not everyone has enjoyed his most recent
book. Regnier’s fiction-novel Fraudulent Justice has come to the
attention – and annoyance – of the French government. It seems Regnier’s narrative appears to have
been based on a true-life crime and trial: the details of which were never brought
to public scrutiny and the judicial outcome now thought a travesty of
justice. So how was it that Regnier
could accurately account so much about a secretive government trial?
Regnier has also returned to Paris to wrestle other demons. The writer suffers headaches which bring
about unexplainable subsequent episodes of amnesia. During such sessions Regnier is visited by
images of violent weather disturbances and of a mysterious black cat. Regnier’s moneyed patron, Henri Borchard
(Douglas Dumbrille), suggests Regnier’s fragile mental state is due to his having
contracted some sort of fever when visiting the tropics. There’s also a measure of astrological hokum
in the scripting mix as well.
Both Bouchard and Regnier’s publisher Paul Audet (Francis
Pierlot) are concerned that following two gruesome murders of which Regnier is
at least tangentially involved, the author’s book sales might plummet and
bankrupt the publishing house. And circumstantial
evidence of Regnier’s involvement in the murders continues to mount. The Catman’s most recent victim - Regnier’s
high-society fiancé Marguerite Duvall (Adele Mara), was recently jilted so the
author might enjoy a new romance with publisher’s daughter Marie (Lenore
Aubert). Having completely fallen for
the dashing author, Marie Audet is completely convinced of Regnier’s innocence…
until she herself is chased through a misty evening garden by a cloak and
top-hatted Catman on the prowl for her blood.
Though the film would eventually pair with Valley of the Zombies, The Catman of Paris was initially paired
on release with John English’s somewhat better-received ice-skating
musical-mystery Murder in the Music Hall. The first wave of reviews of The Catman of Paris were generally fair -
if mostly unfavorable. The Hollywood Reporter ignobly described the
film as an “absurdity,” a career embarrassments to all involved. The lugubrious screenplay of Republic scenarist
Sherman L. Lowe was decried as far too “wordy… every character uttering
editorials instead of dialog.”
There were complaints – also not unfair - that the film
displayed a curious lack of “physical action.” Variety was a bit more forgiving in its assessment,
calling the Valentine’s Day preview of The
Catman of Paris “a cross between a garden-variety whodunit and a
Jekyll-Hyde horror-meller […] that taxes belief to the breaking point.” The Christian
Science Monitor dismissed the film outright as a “routine horror story
based on far-fetched thrills.”
Despite the lukewarm reviews of both Murder in the Music Hall and The
Catman of Paris, the package managed a successful earning of $35,000 in its
first week. Which, at the very least, guaranteed
a second week of booking. Republic, presumptively
optimistic and encouraged by strong initial returns, inked producer Libkov to a
contract of three additional pictures. Though there was the inevitable revenue
fall-off in the second week of release, the trades were reporting box office
tallies in and around Los Angeles remained “good” if not showing signs of
sustained momentum. But by week three,
the box office receipts were down to disappointing four figure earnings. As the Catman
creeped regionally across the U.S. through autumn of 1946, local reviewers and small-town
theater managers found the film a mild mystery offering at best. Subsequently, four-figure weekly returns were
now the norm.