Director: Jacques Tourneur

Jacques Tourneur made Cat People for Val Lewton at RKO on a tiny budget with instructions to deliver a horror film with a lurid title. He responded by showing almost nothing, and the swimming pool sequence, built from light on water and sound, is still taught as the model for implied threat.

I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man continued the method. Out of the Past is his noir, and it is among the best the cycle produced, with Robert Mitchum narrating his own doom.

Night of the Demon is the late one, compromised by a studio that insisted on showing the monster he had deliberately kept off screen.