Cat People (1942)
Director Jacques Tourneur (under the production services of Val Lewton*) does an outstanding job creating a psychological movie which may be considered a horror classic, but which I see as an introspective examination of a male-dominated society in conflict about the sexuality of women.
In the film, Oliver Reed (played by Kent Smith) meets Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) and falls in love with her. Irena is a Serbian with serious issues, it turns out. If her family superstitions are true, she is under a spell which will turn her into a panther if she is sexually aroused or made jealous, and she'll kill her would-be lover.
There are no real special effects in this movie, and it's much more menacing with the terror left to us to fill in. In fact, we can assure ourselves that it's all in Irena's mind. Or maybe that Irena is a blood-thirsty killer. Or maybe there really is a panther loose from the zoo. We can assure ourselves, but we can't be sure. Maybe Irena _is_ a real panther when aroused.
Which leads us to the other level, the issue of sexuality in 1942. Good girls might let you kiss them briefly goodnight, but that was it until you got married. The problem is that girls were taught to be chaste, and then marriage was supposed to change that - and not overnight, either. If you've been taught all your life that sex is wrong, how do you make the change to a panther in bead just because you said, "I do" and got that ring on your finger? In the movie, it's clear that Oliver and Irena never consummate their marriage because of Irena's irrational fears. Irena is jealous of Oliver's platonic friendship with coworker Alice (Jane Randolph), and we see bushes moving as Alice walks along a sidewalk, and we hear the low growl of a panther as Alice swims in the basement pool of the local gym. Alice finds her bathrobe shredded, but we never see the cat. Just shadows and movement.
Because we never see the creature that is stalking people and mutilating their clothing, we're left in the dark (figuratively and literally) about just what's going on. Irena's conversations with a psychiatrist further cloud our minds. The psychiatrist, played with oily George Sanders goodness by Tom Conway (George Sanders's brother), represents society's modern view of the soul and sin. Dr. Judd assures Irena her troubles are based on some childhood trauma (Irena's father was found dead before she was born, killed by a wild beast in a forest) and that he can cure her of her Old World superstition. Irena has told Dr. Judd that in her godforsaken village, those most wise were most wicked. We see this play out in modern New York at their last session.
This movie is significantly different from the 1982 movie of the same name with Nastassja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell, an erotic masterpiece directed by Paul Schrader (which wins my award for the best use of a window ever). The 1942 script deals with the issue of the Code (bad girls must be punished) in a way which is transparent to the story. Writer DeWitt Bodeen lets Irena find the only peace available to the Cat People. The 1982 version by Allen Ormsby goes for the handkerchief instead of the jugular.
*Val Lewton produced a number of B-level horror films for RKO Radio Pictures, and if you ever stumble across any of them, I'd suggest watching them for their depth - they're all cheap movies with competent unknown actors, but there is always more to them than the surface.