The film tells the story of Irena Dubrovna, a newly married Serbian fashion illustrator obsessed with the idea that she is descended from an ancient tribe of Cat People who metamorphose into black panthers when aroused.

He brought together a team of filmmakers that he had worked with in the past, including Tourneur, editor Mark Robson and screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen.

Irena gradually reveals to Oliver that she believes she is descended from the cat people of her village, and that she will transform into a panther if aroused to passion.

[7] Lewton selected most of the film's main crew, including director Jacques Tourneur and writer DeWitt Bodeen, who all worked on the treatment.

"[8] Bodeen then began researching cat-related literature, including Ambrose Bierce's "The Eyes of the Panther" and Margaret Irwin's "Monsieur Seeks a Wife".

[9] Blackwood's story had a contemporary setting and involved a Medieval architecture French town inhabited by a group of devil-worshipping cat people.

[11] According to Tourneur, he was not content with the period setting of "Ancient Sorceries", stating, "if you're going to have horror, the audience must be able to identify with the characters in order to be frightened.

Bodeen concluded that "Tourneur was entirely responsible for the style of Cat People, but if you read the screenplay you would find everything in the film was in the original script – and that's simply because it was a group project.

[15] Simon, a star in her native France, had recently garnered fame in the United States for her role in The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941).

[19] Jane Randolph, then a young actress who had recently begun her film career, was cast as Alice Moore, a woman vying for Oliver's affections.

[26] Additional photography took place at the Royal Palms Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where the swimming pool sequence involving a character believing she is stalked by a panther was shot.

[21][27] Cat People's editor Mark Robson had previously worked on Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons, which was a financial failure on its release.

[31] The score of the film, along with those of I Walked with a Zombie, The Seventh Victim, The Body Snatcher, and Bedlam, was re-recorded by The Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and released on compact disc in 1999.

[36] Upon seeing an early preview, Randolph commented that she thought she was "terrible" in the film, while Simon was terrified that people would laugh at her performance, specifically in the pool scene.

[53] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times described the film as a "labored and obvious attempt to induce shock", and said that its themes are explored "at tedious and graphically unproductive length".

[52] Variety stated that the film was "well-made on a moderate budget outlay" and relies upon "developments of surprises confined to psychology and mental reaction, rather than transformation to grotesque and marauding characters for visual impact on the audiences".

The review went on to say that the script would be "hazy for the average audience in several instances, [but] carries sufficient punch in the melodramatic sequences to hold it together in good style", elaborating that Tourneur "does a fine job with a most difficult assignment".

[56] Fujiwara summarized Cat People's retrospective critical status by stating that it "is so famous that it has, inevitably, suffered a backlash, and now it might even be called underrated".

[57] Less enthusiastic reviews came from Charles Higam and Joel Greenberg, who wrote that the film now appeared "so understated that much of its intended effect is dissipated [...] its total impression is distinctly tepid".

[58] Joel E. Siegel spoke about the film in his book on Lewton, stating it was "seriously weakened by passages of lumpy, strained dialogue, uncertain performance and uneven pacing".

[60] In his 1995 book on Lewton, Edmund G. Bansak found that Cat People "may have lost some of its edge over the years and what remains may be a bit tarnished, but it is infinitely better than Paul Schrader's 1982 remake".

[63] Siegel critiqued her acting, stating that her range was "too narrow for the film's more dramatic moments, a problem heightened by her difficulties with American pronunciation".

[68] He remarked that the film would work for contemporary audiences depending on their tastes, stating that it is "frightening in an eerie, mysterious way that was hard to define" with "an undertone of sexual danger that was more ominous because it was never acted upon".

[68] Ebert also praised the filmmakers, writing that Tourneur and Musuraca were "masters of light and shadow", and called the films Lewton produced in the 1940s "landmark[s] in American movie history".

[68] In 1993, the Library of Congress deemed Cat People "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

[71] The Seventh Victim is described by Newman as being "an unacknowledged spin-off" of Cat People, as it also features Tom Conway playing Dr. Judd, as well as another haunted woman eager to embrace death.

According to Ormsby, Vadim was very concerned that the film would appear sexist, as the woman who was sexually intense had to be destroyed, so he created a male character who has the same problem.

A number of contemporary films were influenced by Cat People, such as Columbia Pictures' Cry of the Werewolf (1944), which Newman described as combining the "subtle Lewton approach" with elements from Universal's The Wolf Man, like a plot that involves a gypsy curse.

Numerous films have borrowed plot or character elements from Cat People, particularly by having a female character who fears she has inherited the tendency to turn into a monster, or attempted to replicate the shadowy visual style of Tourneur and Musuraca, among them Jungle Woman (1944), The Soul of a Monster (1944), The Woman Who Came Back (1945), She-Wolf of London (1946), The Catman of Paris (1946), The Cat Creeps (1946), The Creeper (1948), Cult of the Cobra (1955), The She-Creature (1956), and Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957).

[17] The first was Night Tide (1961), which reworked the plot of Cat People into a story about a sideshow performer who dresses as a mermaid and is concerned she actually is a siren.