Cat People | 1982
- Locations |
- Louisiana;
- Los Angeles, California
- DIRECTOR |
- Paul Schrader
Discover the New Orleans locations for Paul Schrader's 1982 remake of Jacques Tourneur's atmospheric RKO classic from 1942.
Everything that was hinted at in the studio-bound original is made explicit, while a wildly different ending is added.
The story is moved to New Orleans, where Irena Gallier (Nastassja Kinski) arrives at the old Louis Armstrong International Airport terminal (before major redevelopment) to be reunited with her long-separated brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell) whom she's not seen since she was four years old.
She stays with him at his house, which remains pretty much unchanged, 591 Esplanade Avenue at Chartres Street on the border of the French Quarter.
Strange things are happening in the city. Zoo curator Oliver (John Heard) is called out to capture a mysterious black leopard trapped in a hotel room after mauling a sex worker.
The sleazy hotel stood alone beneath the elevated US Route 90, looking vulnerable to redevelopment and, yes, it's one of the locations that has disappeared as the Pontrarchain Expressway was redeveloped. It stood at 1148 Annunciation Street on the corner of Erato Street in the Lower Garden District, a spot now occupied by concrete supports for the roadway.
The next loss is the amazing art deco building used as the 'Full Gospel Church of God in Christ', where Irena looks for her brother who works there. This was 1031 North Claiborne Avenue at Ursulines Avenue in Tremé / Lafitte. It opened in 1913 as the segregated, open-air Harlequin Theater before becoming the Clabon Theater from 1938 until 1978, which served an African American clientele during the notorious Jim Crow era. It went on to become a disco and finally a church again, before closing for good. In 2011, the sinuous deco frontage disappeared but the building survived abandoned and neglected until having to be demolished in 2022 after it began to collapse.
Finding he's not there, Irena takes the opportunity to do a little sightseeing around the city, strolling through Jackson Square. She eventually decides on a trip to Audubon Zoo, 6500 Magazine Street.
That's not the main entrance, but an old entrance by Cooper Plaza where Irena walks past the circular pool (which now houses the Elephant Fountain). In the next wide shot, most of the zoo is replaced by a matte painting – before this could be done with CGI – and those disturbingly cramped brick pens in which the animals are kept, along with the looming feline statues, were built on the backlot of Universal Studios in Universal City, Los Angeles.
Here, she's strangely fascinated by the captive leopard and lingers after the zoo has closed, attracting the attention of Oliver.
He naturally takes her for dinner at a "seafood restaurant", the old Angelo Brocato ice-cream parlor, which now houses bakery Le Croissant d'Or, 617 Ursulines Avenue, where he offers her a job in the zoo gift shop. BTW, if you're missing the ice cream, Brocato's lives on at North Carrollton Avenue.
At the zoo, Irena's co-worker Alice (Annette O'Toole) invites her for a drink at what was Cliff's Lounge. The bar has gone but the building lives on as a private home at 1015 St Louis Street near Burgundy Street in the French Quarter.
Things just get weirder and when Paul starts to come on to his sister, and the cellar of the Gallier home is discovered to be full of chewed bodies, Irena wisely moves out.
She stays with Oliver and they head out to stay with a friend in his waterfront shack on Lake Pontrarchain at Slidell, northeast of New Orleans.
Trying to escape her fate, Irena buys a rail ticket to 'Richmond' at New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, 1001 Loyola Avenue, but it's pointless. After a strange dream, she's soon back in the city and accepting her condition.
The swimming pool where Alice is spooked by an unseen feline presence in an homage to the famous sequence from the original movie was an old YMCA facility in Pasadena, California.
The brick-pillared walkway through which Alice feels she's being stalked is in New Orleans Botanical Garden, 5 Victory Avenue.
