Val Lewton (1904-1951) has become famous in monster movie circles as the creator of The Cat People (1942) and The Curse of the Cat People (1944). The low budget forced director Jacque Tourneur to use atmosphere instead of expensive effects. Many agree this made the films better. What some may not know is that Lewton wrote a story for Weird Tales twelve years earlier that was the seed of the film series.
“The Bagheeta” (Weird Tales, July 1930 ) by Val Lewton is not that similar to the films. Kolya, an armorer’s assistant living in the Caucas Mountains, is selected to slay the Bagheeta because he is a young man pure of heart (a virgin). He gets advice from Davil, a singer, who killed a Bagheeta in his youth and by the veteran hunter, Rif’khas, who says the Bagheeta is just a panther. Kolya goes into the forest alone and slays the creature with a sword, finding it to be a lepoard after all. He realizes he won’t gain any acclaim if he tells the truth and chooses to lie like Davil did before him.
The Legend says: “It is a were-beast, they said, half leopard and half woman, the reincarnation of a virgin who has died from wrongs inflicted upon her by sinful men, and who comes again to the world so that she may prey upon the flocks of the sinful. Only a pure youth, one who has lain clean and alone, can hope to slay the mystic beast. he must ride out against the Bagheeta with only a sword at his side and a prayer to King God upon his lips. The Bagheeta, so the women said, will change at his coming into a beautiful woman and attempt to coerce him into an embrace. if she is successful, if the youth kisses her, his life is forfeited.Changing again into a black leopard, the Bagheeta will tear him limb from limb. But, if he remains steadfast in his purity, then surely will he slay the beast.”
The Bagheeta in the legend is related to a ghost or specter in that it was once a wrongfully slain virgin girl. Val Lewton would later re-work this material for the background of the film if not the actual story. The 1982 re-make kept little of the original material except the connection between sex and transformation.
The Cat People films follow Irena Dubrovna, a young Serbian fashion illustrator, who falls in love and gets married. Unfortunately she descended from a race of were-panthers. The film moves the location of the were-leopard race from the Caucasus Mountains to Serbia. The 1982 remake is even less specific about where the old race comes from.
Lewton’s story was not the only big cat creature in Weird Tales. Bassett Morgan’s “Black Bagheela” (January 1935) seems to owe something to the Bhagheeta. David K. Keller used the idea for a sexist rant in “Tiger Cat” (October 1937), were-leopards in “Spotted Satan” by Otis Adelbert Kline (January 1940), and Edmond Hamilton had creatures evolved from cats in “Day of Judgment” (September 1946).
Weird Tales had its share of celebs breaking into the business in its pages. The most famous is Tennessee Williams with his “The Vengeance of Nitocris” (August 1928), but others like Lucy Maud Montgomery of Anne of Green Gables fame with “The House at Smoky Island” (August 1935), Jim Kjelgaard who wrote Big Red (1945) and Robert S. Carr of The Rampant Age (1928) who wrote a WT classic “Spider Bite” (June 1926). Val Lewton is in good company.
