{ "id": "ep57114y4x", "slug": "the-leopard-man", "title": "The Leopard Man", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror", "label": "Horror films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror.monster-and-creature-films", "label": "Monster and creature films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror.monster-and-creature-films" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror", "label": "United States · 1800 to 1945: Horror films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror", "path": [ { "id": "geo.us", "label": "United States", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800", "label": "United States · 1800 to 1945", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror", "label": "Horror films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Leopard Man (1943) is a Val Lewton-produced, Jacques Tourneur-directed RKO horror film, the third of their collaborations, adapted from Cornell Woolrich's Black Alibi, about killings blamed on an escaped leopard that are actually a human killer's work.", "snippet": "The Leopard Man (1943) is a Val Lewton-produced, Jacques Tourneur-directed RKO horror film, the third of their collaborations, adapted from Cornell Woolrich's Black Alibi, about killings blamed on an escaped leopard that are actually a human killer's work.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.horror.monster-and-creature-films", "markdown": "# The Leopard Man\n\n**The Leopard Man** is a 1943 American black-and-white horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton at RKO Radio Pictures, in which killings in a small [New Mexico](https://www.edgepedia.org/new-mexico) town are first blamed on an escaped black leopard and then traced to a human killer using the cat as an alibi. It was the third and final film Tourneur directed for Lewton, after *[Cat People](https://www.edgepedia.org/cat-people-1942-film)* (1942) and *I Walked with a Zombie* (1943).[1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/455c0118-82af-5927-841f-27f91c77b771/the-leopard-man) • [2](https://www.viennale.at/en/films/leopard-man)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Release | 8 May 1943, RKO Radio Pictures; production ran 9 February to 8 March 1943[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/542-THE-LEOPARDMAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=be730a89-1e5c-4c5c-88e9-30811ef1a004&sr=0.027470019) |\n| Running time | 59 or 65–66 minutes per the AFI Catalog; 66 minutes per the BFI[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/542-THE-LEOPARDMAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=be730a89-1e5c-4c5c-88e9-30811ef1a004&sr=0.027470019) • [1](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/455c0118-82af-5927-841f-27f91c77b771/the-leopard-man) |\n| Source | Cornell Woolrich's hard-boiled novel *Black Alibi* (1942); the title was changed by RKO production chief Charles Koerner to capitalize on *Cat People*[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/448/the-leopard-man) |\n| Key personnel | Screenplay Ardel Wray and Edward Dein; cinematography Robert De Grasse; editing Mark Robson; music Roy Webb[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/542-THE-LEOPARDMAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=be730a89-1e5c-4c5c-88e9-30811ef1a004&sr=0.027470019) |\n| Principal cast | Dennis O'Keefe (Jerry Manning), Jean Brooks (Kiki Walker), Margo (Clo-Clo), James Bell (Dr. Galbraith), Margaret Landry (Teresa Delgado)[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/542-THE-LEOPARDMAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=be730a89-1e5c-4c5c-88e9-30811ef1a004&sr=0.027470019) |\n| Budget | Under $150,000 with a four-week shooting schedule[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/448/the-leopard-man) |\n| Critical standing | 90% Tomatometer from 21 reviews and 64% Popcornmeter from over 1,000 audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/leopard_man) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nThe story opens in a nightclub in a small New Mexico town, where the Latin dancer Clo-Clo (Margo) upstages the singer Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks). Kiki's press agent, Jerry Manning (Dennis O'Keefe), rents a black leopard as a publicity stunt for her act. As Kiki leads the animal onstage, it is frightened by the sound of Clo-Clo's castanets, breaks loose, and escapes into the night.[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/542-THE-LEOPARDMAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=be730a89-1e5c-4c5c-88e9-30811ef1a004&sr=0.027470019) • [6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/leopard-man)\n\nThat night, Mrs. Delgado sends her daughter Teresa (Margaret Landry) out for cornmeal despite the girl's terror of the leopard. On the way home the animal attacks her at her own doorstep; her mother cannot work the rusted lock in time, and the murder is conveyed from inside the house through the girl's screams, her pounding at the locked door, and a trickle of blood seeping under it. A second woman, Consuelo (Tula Parma), is killed while locked inside a cemetery, apparently mauled by the escaped cat. Manning, however, comes to suspect that the culprit is human rather than feline, a psychopath \"with a kink in his brain\" who is using the leopard as an alibi, and suspicion falls on the animal's owner (Abner Biberman) before the truth points elsewhere.[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/542-THE-LEOPARDMAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=be730a89-1e5c-4c5c-88e9-30811ef1a004&sr=0.027470019) • [4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/448/the-leopard-man) • [5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/leopard_man) Clo-Clo, told by a fortune-teller that money from a rich man will be followed by the \"black card of death,\" becomes the third victim.[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/542-THE-LEOPARDMAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=be730a89-1e5c-4c5c-88e9-30811ef1a004&sr=0.027470019) • [7](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-leopard-man)\n\n## Production\n\nRKO bought the rights to Woolrich's novel for $5,175 and assigned them to Lewton, who had just completed *Cat People* and *I Walked with a Zombie*. Pre-production began in February 1943, by which time the box-office returns on *Cat People* had confirmed that Lewton's low-budget \"suggested horror\" formula had found a large audience. RKO rewarded Tourneur, who had already finished shooting *I Walked with a Zombie*, with a $5,000 bonus and a contract for A-budget pictures once he completed a third film with Lewton.[8](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/music-in-the-horror-films-of-val-lewton/leopard-man-as-penitential-horror-film/1A663AC4907F31DE4D73A8A29FBCC199) • [9](https://filmnoir.art.blog/2008/09/14/the-leopard-man-1943-dated-and-over-rated/)\n\n**Adaptation and censorship.** Screenwriters Ardel Wray and Edward Dein changed Woolrich's text to keep costs low and sidestep the censors. In the novel, set in South America, Clo-Clo was a part-time prostitute and the killer was unmasked as a police inspector who adorned himself with animal parts cut from the carcass of an escaped jaguar (not a leopard), details that would have violated the Production Code. The film's exteriors were shot around [Santa Fe, New Mexico](https://www.edgepedia.org/santa-fe-new-mexico), and Wray's snapshots of local buildings were used by the RKO art department as references for the sets.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/448/the-leopard-man)\n\n**The leopard.** The cat, named Dynamite, was the same animal used in *Cat People*.[6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/leopard-man)\n\n## Style and reception\n\nThe film is built on the Lewton unit's signature method of implying horror rather than showing it: shadows, sound, and suggestion carry the menace. The Teresa Delgado sequence, in which a girl is sent on a nighttime errand with a killer cat on the loose, is the film's most cited set piece, and the cemetery chase turns a space legible by daylight into a maze of statuary and branches. [Sound design](https://www.edgepedia.org/sound-design) is equally central, from the train that passes above Teresa to the castanets that function as a leitmotif throughout the film.[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/448/the-leopard-man) • [6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/leopard-man) • [7](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-leopard-man)\n\nThe climax takes place during a Penitente religious procession commemorating local indigenous people killed by conquistadors in the seventeenth century, for which composer Roy Webb wrote an original penitential chant rather than drawing on the existing Roman Catholic repertory. Critics have read the film as a victim-centered horror film that develops the personalities and family circumstances of its three female victims before their deaths, and as a forerunner of the giallo and slasher traditions; the film critic and later director [William Friedkin](https://www.edgepedia.org/william-friedkin) recorded a commentary for its 2020 Scream Factory Blu-ray release.[8](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/music-in-the-horror-films-of-val-lewton/leopard-man-as-penitential-horror-film/1A663AC4907F31DE4D73A8A29FBCC199) • [6](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/leopard-man) • [10](https://www.digitalbits.com/reviews/item/the-leopard-man-scream-2020-bd)\n\nContemporary and later assessments differ. *Variety* found the plot too confused for an audience to follow, and Bosley Crowther of *The New York Times* gave it one and a half stars out of five, calling it a half-baked effort; later critics such as those at *Slant Magazine* and Time Out have ranked it among the high points of the Lewton-Tourneur cycle. Both Tourneur and Lewton themselves considered the film a failure relative to their two earlier collaborations.[5](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/leopard_man) • [11](https://www.cinemateca.pt/CinematecaSite/media/Documentos/2023-12-14_THE-LEOPARD-MAN.pdf)\n\n## Place in the Lewton-Tourneur cycle\n\n*The Leopard Man* closed the partnership: RKO decided to assign producer and director to separate projects to double output, reasoning that did not account for how their talents complemented each other. Tourneur described the collaboration by saying, \"Val was the dreamer, the idealist, and I was the materialist, the realist.\" Lewton went on to produce *The Seventh Victim* (1943) and later films with [Boris Karloff](https://www.edgepedia.org/boris-karloff), while Tourneur moved into film noir with *Out of the Past* (1947).[4](https://www.tcm.com/articles/448/the-leopard-man)\n\nWithin the trilogy, the film departs from its predecessors by denying the viewer any fixed character identification and by shifting the supernatural mystery of *Cat People* and *I Walked with a Zombie* toward a human killer, a reorientation that festival retrospectives have described as an important stage in Tourneur's engagement with genre.[2](https://www.viennale.at/en/films/leopard-man)\n\n## References\n\n1. [The Leopard Man (1943), British Film Institute](https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/455c0118-82af-5927-841f-27f91c77b771/the-leopard-man)\n2. [The Leopard Man, Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival), Retrospektive 2018](https://www.viennale.at/en/films/leopard-man)\n3. [The Leopard Man (1943), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/542-THE-LEOPARDMAN?cp=1&pos=4&sid=be730a89-1e5c-4c5c-88e9-30811ef1a004&sr=0.027470019)\n4. [Bret Wood, \"The Leopard Man,\" Turner Classic Movies](https://www.tcm.com/articles/448/the-leopard-man)\n5. [The Leopard Man, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/leopard_man)\n6. [Chloe Lizotte, \"The Leopard Man,\" Screen Slate, December 16, 2018](https://www.screenslate.com/articles/leopard-man)\n7. [Ed Gonzalez, \"Review: The Leopard Man,\" Slant Magazine, June 22, 2004](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-leopard-man)\n8. [Michael Lee, \"The Leopard Man as Penitential Horror Film,\" in *Music in the Horror Films of Val Lewton* (Edinburgh University Press, 2022)](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/music-in-the-horror-films-of-val-lewton/leopard-man-as-penitential-horror-film/1A663AC4907F31DE4D73A8A29FBCC199)\n9. [The Leopard Man (1943): Dated and Over-rated, FilmsNoir.Net](https://filmnoir.art.blog/2008/09/14/the-leopard-man-1943-dated-and-over-rated/)\n10. [Leopard Man, The (Blu-ray Review), The Digital Bits](https://www.digitalbits.com/reviews/item/the-leopard-man-scream-2020-bd)\n11. [Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema program notes for The Leopard Man](https://www.cinemateca.pt/CinematecaSite/media/Documentos/2023-12-14_THE-LEOPARD-MAN.pdf)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Monster and creature films*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-leopard-man", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-leopard-man.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Leopard Man\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-leopard-man. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Leopard Man](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-leopard-man)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-leopard-man](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-leopard-man). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Leopard Man\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-leopard-man. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Leopard Man is a Val Lewton-produced, Jacques Tourneur-directed RKO horror film, the third of their collaborations, adapted from Cornell Woolrich's Black Alibi, about killings blamed on an escaped leopard that are actually a human killer's work." }