- One thing I like about horror movies produced by Val Lewton is that their titles don't sound any better than those of their vastly inferior contemporaries. I could imagine a moviegoer in 1943 seeing Bela Lugosi's name on a poster for The Ape Man and making the regrettable decision to go see that B-movie schlockfest instead of the relatively enjoyable The Leopard Man. Although the two movies have similarly bad titles, one of them was produced by Val Lawton, directed by Jacques Tourneur, and based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich. That's enough to make a big difference.
- The Leopard Man begins with a truly odd incident in which Jerry Manning (Dennis O'Keefe) convinces his girlfriend Kiki (Jean Brooks) to walk a black leopard onstage at the nightclub that employs her. The idea is that the big cat will distract the audience from Kiki's rival Clo-Clo (Margo), whose castanet dancing has quickly become the nightclub's big draw. Instead, the leopard escapes and kills a young woman named Teresa Delgado (Margaret Landry), whose jokey last name forms a stark contrast with her terrifying final moments, which involve shining eyes in the dark, a train standing in for the "Lewton bus", and a puddle of blood streaming in under a door.
- Soon, the entire New Mexican town is in an uproar, and both the leopard's owner (Abner Biberman) and a local leopard expert (James Bell) join in on the hunt. I doubt I'm ruining anything by noting that another young woman (Tula Parma) is found mauled and that the predictions of a local fortune teller (Isabel Jewell) eventually come true. Admittedly, the plot is less compelling than the film's atmosphere, which handles the shadowy dread of a nighttime stalker and an eerie festival march through the barren countryside equally well. Perhaps I should be disappointed that the film does not contain a half-man, half-leopard as its title would suggest, but then again that approach to horror didn't really work out too well for The Ape Man.
- The black leopard is the same one featured in Cat People.
