Remake time! Although apparently director Paul Schrader ("American Gigolo"; also the writer of "Taxi Driver") insisted that he didn't intend "Cat People" as a remake of the 1942 film. Still, it's got main characters named Irena, Oliver and Alice, who all have roughly the same relationships with each other. And it's got the same conceit: that Irena, if aroused to physical passion, will transform into a panther and kill her lover. But rather than a shadowy thriller, Schrader turns that material into an erotic sort of psychodrama. Does that count as a remake? You decide!

Schrader makes Irena's duality — sweet virginal girl/homicidal cat person — much more literal by giving her an older brother, Paul (Malcolm McDowell). As the film opens, Irena (Natassja Kinski) is meeting him for the first time; she's been raised up north by foster families but has come to live with Paul in hot, sweaty New Orleans. Paul knows about the cat-people thing and embraces it, but Irena's got no idea. I wouldn't have thought it, but these two do make a sublimely feline pair: McDowell leaps lithely onto railings, Kinski wriggles kittenishly, and both of them gaze around with their huge, hypnotic eyes. Meow!

Shortly after Irena's arrival, Paul disappears, and Irena becomes fascinated with the new black leopard at the local zoo. Irena in turn fascinates zoo boss Oliver (John Heard), to the irritation of his colleague Alice (a sublimely beautiful Annette O'Toole). Let the sexual drama begin!

It may all sound tawdry and godawful, but remember that the 1942 film was considered a B movie. Schrader's film is a rocking good time if you can manage the premise. It's a big pop mashup of myth and sex and blood and fun. My expectations were rock-bottom, but I had an absolute blast watching this. How can you not love a movie that opens and closes with David Bowie's voice?

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