This '80s film is more of a love story than a horror although it does have a few fairly horrific scenes in, in particular a rather graphic scene where a zoo worker has his arm ripped off by a black panther.
The film opens in the prehistoric past with a girl being tied to a tree and left for a big cat... the action then moves the the present day where a beautiful young woman called Irena arrives in New Orleans and is met by her brother Paul who she hasn't seen since their parents died when she was a child. The next night her brother disappears around the same time a panther mauls a prostitute in a seedy hotel, this creature is captured and taken to the local zoo.
Irena goes looking for her brother but can't find him so decides to do some sightseeing and ends up at the zoo where she seems drawn the the recently captured panther which she starts to sketch, in fact she is so engrossed that she is still there an hour after the zoo closes. When Oliver, the zoo's curator, finds her there they end up going out for a meal of oysters together and she is offered a job in the zoo's gift shop. Her first day at work doesn't end well though as she witnesses one of the zoo workers being killed by the panther, and when Oliver arrives to put it down the panther has escaped. Once home she finds that her brother has returned, he explains their families strange heritage; that they are part panther and whenever they have sex with a person they become a panther and can't be human again until they have killed a person. He also tells her that the only exception to this is if they do it with another of their kind and as they are the last too that means incest. Irena is horrified at this and flees, bumping in to the police outside, they search the house's basement and find human remains they assume that Paul has been feeding people to a big cat rather than being the cat himself.
Oliver takes Irena to his house out of town which can only be reached by boat, here she starts to feel more in touch with nature and goes out at night, removes her nightdress and prowls around naked till she finds and kills a rabbit. On their return to the city her brother kills again, this time however he is trapped as a panther and killed, when Oliver performs a post mortem on the creature something rather strange occurs.
When Oliver's colleague Alice is out running she has a feeling she is being followed. Later when she goes for a swim she hears a strange growling and is scared when Irena enters as if she somehow knows she is dangerous. Later Irena sleeps with Oliver and as predicted becomes a panther in an impressive transformation scene. She does not however kill him, instead she leaves him but she is cornered by the police on a bridge, when Oliver arrives she jumps from the bridge into the river. Oliver heads back to his river side home and finds a friend dead in a tree and Irena at the house. I won't spoil the actual ending although.
The film is pretty good and the effects have aged well, it is good to see such scenes as the transformation done with makeup and prosthetics that than CGI. There is a fair amount of nudity in the film, some scenes like Irena walking around naked can be justified as it shows she is behaving in an animal rather than a human way others such as Alice swimming topless seem to be there just to show off Annette O'Toole's admittedly nice breasts.
The acting was good, especially Nastassja Kinski's portrayal of Irena which was positivity feline and switched from an innocent to a predator believably through the course of the film. While this film is by no means perfect I'd certainly recommend it to fans of "creature features" or Nastassja Kinski.
The film opens in the prehistoric past with a girl being tied to a tree and left for a big cat... the action then moves the the present day where a beautiful young woman called Irena arrives in New Orleans and is met by her brother Paul who she hasn't seen since their parents died when she was a child. The next night her brother disappears around the same time a panther mauls a prostitute in a seedy hotel, this creature is captured and taken to the local zoo.
Irena goes looking for her brother but can't find him so decides to do some sightseeing and ends up at the zoo where she seems drawn the the recently captured panther which she starts to sketch, in fact she is so engrossed that she is still there an hour after the zoo closes. When Oliver, the zoo's curator, finds her there they end up going out for a meal of oysters together and she is offered a job in the zoo's gift shop. Her first day at work doesn't end well though as she witnesses one of the zoo workers being killed by the panther, and when Oliver arrives to put it down the panther has escaped. Once home she finds that her brother has returned, he explains their families strange heritage; that they are part panther and whenever they have sex with a person they become a panther and can't be human again until they have killed a person. He also tells her that the only exception to this is if they do it with another of their kind and as they are the last too that means incest. Irena is horrified at this and flees, bumping in to the police outside, they search the house's basement and find human remains they assume that Paul has been feeding people to a big cat rather than being the cat himself.
Oliver takes Irena to his house out of town which can only be reached by boat, here she starts to feel more in touch with nature and goes out at night, removes her nightdress and prowls around naked till she finds and kills a rabbit. On their return to the city her brother kills again, this time however he is trapped as a panther and killed, when Oliver performs a post mortem on the creature something rather strange occurs.
When Oliver's colleague Alice is out running she has a feeling she is being followed. Later when she goes for a swim she hears a strange growling and is scared when Irena enters as if she somehow knows she is dangerous. Later Irena sleeps with Oliver and as predicted becomes a panther in an impressive transformation scene. She does not however kill him, instead she leaves him but she is cornered by the police on a bridge, when Oliver arrives she jumps from the bridge into the river. Oliver heads back to his river side home and finds a friend dead in a tree and Irena at the house. I won't spoil the actual ending although.
The film is pretty good and the effects have aged well, it is good to see such scenes as the transformation done with makeup and prosthetics that than CGI. There is a fair amount of nudity in the film, some scenes like Irena walking around naked can be justified as it shows she is behaving in an animal rather than a human way others such as Alice swimming topless seem to be there just to show off Annette O'Toole's admittedly nice breasts.
The acting was good, especially Nastassja Kinski's portrayal of Irena which was positivity feline and switched from an innocent to a predator believably through the course of the film. While this film is by no means perfect I'd certainly recommend it to fans of "creature features" or Nastassja Kinski.