THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE comes back to haunt its survivors in the disarming sequel on Blu-ray from Scream Factory.

Roughly six years after the death of his wife Irena (Simone Simon, MADEMOISELLE FIFI) who believed herself descended from a race of people who had given themselves over to Satan and were able to transform into cats, architect Oliver Reed (Kent Smith, GAMES) is now living in upstate New York – Sleepy Hollow to be exact – and has married spunky co-worker Alice (Jane Randolph, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN) and they have a daughter Amy (Ann Carter, THE TWO MISS CARROLLS) who has "too many fancies and too few friends." Worried that Amy's fantasy world could swallow her up the way it did his first wife ("I know what can happen when people begin to lie to themselves"), Oliver intensely discourages Amy's imaginary friends and seems unsympathetic when she claims that none of her classmates want to be her friends. When a trio of classmates ditch her in front of the local haunted house, a voice draws her to the window and she is bestowed with a "wishing ring" with which she asks for a friend of her own. Besides becoming acquainted with the "witch" Julia Ferren (Julia Dean, NIGHTMARE ALLEY), a former actress who entertains her with performances – inspiring jealousy from her own daughter Barbara (Elizabeth Russell, THE CORPSE VANISHES) who she insists is an imposter and that her real daughter died as a child – Amy gains a new friend in Irena who warns her that she must never tell anyone else about her. Both using Amy's teacher Miss Callahan (Eve March, ADAM'S RIB) as a sounding board, Alice feels that Irena's memory is overshadowing her marriage while Oliver tries to be more patient with Amy. When Amy discovers a photograph of her father with her new friend, Oliver's anger sends Amy out into the stormy winter night and right into the middle of a very real danger as the enmity between the Ferrens comes to a head.

While obviously not the sequel RKO wanted to producer Val Lewton's (ISLE OF THE DEAD) and director Jacques Tourner's (NIGHT OF THE DEMON) shockingly successful A-picture with a B-movie budget CAT PEOPLE, THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE is an unexpectedly moving, psychologically dense and insightful work considering that it was begun by short subject director Gunther von Fritsch (STOLEN IDENTITY) and finished behind schedule and over-budget by editor Robert Wise who had already shot additional sequences for THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (reusing that production's leftover sets here for the Ferren household) after it was taken away from Orson Welles. Throughout the film, we see the mixed messages Amy receives from the adults in her lives: from Oliver discouraging her belief in the stories he told her when she was younger – one of which inadvertently leads to a misunderstanding that leaves her sixth birthday party without guests and her subsequently without friends from classmates who feel snubbed – and Alice's seeming credulity to her stories if only to make Oliver listen when he goes so far to accuse his daughter of going back on a promise she made only to please him, to houseboy Edward (Sir Lancelot, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE) who puts the idea into Amy's head that Mrs. Ferren's ring is a "wishing ring" and seeming to share the same beliefs about the old woman as the neighborhood children, and even her teacher who is seen telling her students the local legends and inadvertently singling Amy out by telling her classmates that she is a little different. In subsequent viewings, the parallels between Oliver and Amy and the Ferrens become more apparent and painful: with Barbara alienated by her mother's fantasies which cast her as the villain mirroring not Oliver but a future for Amy if she perceives her father's frustration and worry as withholding affection. Once the mysterious "cat woman" who frightened Irena in CAT PEOPLE, Russell as Barbara Ferren is perhaps the film's most pitiable character; and the her actions during finale could be interpreted not as stemming from supernatural intervention but being caught off-guard that someone actually could see her as a friend in spite of her own outward coldness. As with the former film, the cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca is as integral to the tapestry of the film as the scoring of Roy Webb – who reprises Irena's theme throughout in unsettling ways – and he would be given more opportunities to demonstrate his skill with RKO's THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE and a number of film noirs like Ida Lupino's THE HITCH-HIKER before finishing off his career in episodic television. Wise would be given the subsequent opportunities to direct for producer Val Lewton and would go on to a number of MGM blockbusters including the masterful THE HAUNTING.

While the original CAT PEOPLE had the cachet to merit a VHS release in the early 1980s, the sequel did not appear on tape until Turner Entertainment's sublabel RKO Home Video issued both films in the late 1980s in conjunction with Image Entertainment's separate laserdiscs of the two films (with the first film reissued as a Criterion Collection special edition a decade later). The film was then issued on DVD as part of the six-disc VAL LEWTON HORROR COLLECTION from Warner in 2005 with an audio commentary by Greg Mank featuring recorded comments from actress Simon. When The Criterion Collection issued CAT PEOPLE on Blu-ray in 2016, it was hoped that they would eventually release not only the sequel but the rest of Val Lewton horrors; however, Scream Factory's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray makes for a gorgeous looking and thoughtfully-supplemented companion piece to the Criterion's CAT PEOPLE. The DVD looked sleek and noir-ish for the time, but the HD image looks brighter while preserving the film's contrasts between light and shadow with nicely rendered fine detail in long shots and close-ups that occasionally look like they could have been shot yesterday on black and white stock while the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is more vivid, rendering the early half-heard iterations of Irena's theme clearly enough that it stands out as a flaw connected to film's original ending as described in Mank's commentary track. Optional English SDH subtitles are available and are most helpful in underlining the film's themes as voiced by the characters.

In addition to porting over the Warner commentary by historian Greg Mank featuring recorded comments from the late Simon, Scream Factory has also commissioned a new commentary by author/film historian Steve Haberman. Both offer some of the same anecdotal information with Haberman taking on a more linear account beginning with the Lewton's appointment in charge of the horror department of RKO to take on the Universal films, DeWitt Bodeen's original script and Lewton's incorporation of autobiographical elements from his own childhood – he sent out invitations for his sister's birthday party in a magical mailbox – as well as the ways in which the relationship between Oliver and Amy mirrored his own strained relationship with his daughter, while the powerful ending sequence is accompanied by his account of Lewton's last days. Mank's commentary contains more anecdotes, recorded comments from Simon, draws from other interviews conducted by him, and is bookended by his comments on how Letwon's widow devoted her later life to working with disturbed children lest the darkness that consumed her husband do the same to them. There is also some play-by-play in Mank's commentary but the intensity of his delivery is compelling and he also devotes the climax to a discussion of the refilmed ending and supposition about why Lewton might have changed his feelings about Russell's character.