The Leopard Man **** (1943, Dennis O’Keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks) – Classic Movie Review 3761

Director Jacques Tourneur’s brilliant 1943 film noir horror thriller for producer Val Lewton boasts a marvellously eerie atmosphere thanks to Tourneur’s skills and Robert De Grasse’s beautiful and evocative camerawork. And the music by Roy Webb and Constantin Bakaleinikoff and the production designs by Albert S D’Agostino and Walter E Keller add enormously to the creepy mood.

Ardel Wray and Edward Dean’s screenplay is based on the novel Black Alibi by Cornell Woolrich (The Bride Wore Black, Phantom Lady, The Window, Rear Window). In the story, an escaped leopard and a serial killer are terrorising the local villagers in New Mexico.

Jean Brooks plays Kiki Walker, a club singer who used the leashed leopard in her act, at the behest of the PR man Jerry Manning (Dennis O’Keefe), before her rival terrified it off. Then locals in the vicinity are attacked and killed thereafter. But is it actually the escaped leopard that is doing the dirty deeds?

Kiki and Jerry start to think the leopard may not be responsible for the killings after all, so Jerry and Clo-Clo (Margo) set out to investigate.

Also in the cast are Isabel Jewell as the fortune teller Maria, James Bell as Dr Galbraith, Ben Bard as the Police Chief Roblos, Margaret Landry, Abner Biberman, Tuulikki Paananen [Tula Parma], Fely Franquelli, Ariel Heath, Richard Martin, Robert Anderson, Jacqueline deWit, John Dilson, Joe Dominguez, Elison Gamboa, William Halligan, Rose Higgins, Brandon Hurst, Kate Drain Lawson, Jacques Lory, Mary MacLaren, Ottola Nesmith, Tom Orosco, Rene Pedrini, John Piffle, Betty Roadman, George Sherwood, Bobby Spinola, Marguerita Sylva, John Trosa, Riota Varella and Russell Wade.