Region: 1 (USA, Canada and US territories)
Rating: 
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Format: Keep Case, Widescreen Anamorphic, 1.85:1, Color
DVD Features: Audio Track 1: English, Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
An Intimate Portrait by Paul Schrader
Feature Commentary with director Paul Schrader
On the Set with the Director
Special Make-Up Effects by Tom Burman
Matte Paintings
Filmmaker Robert Wise on the producer of the original Cat People, Val Lewton
Region: 1 (USA, Canada and US territories)
Rating:
Label: Image Entertainment
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Format: Snap Case, Widescreen Letterbox, 1.85:1, Closed Captioned, Color, Sides:1 (SS-SL)
DVD Features: Audio Track 1: English, Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Peter W. Simeon :
This DVD was transferred from a rather old master tape. It is therefore quite dissapointing. Because of this and because the film was not very steady during the transfer, this master was very hard to compress. The picture contains a lot of video noise and some compression artifacts. Sometimes a digital noise raster appears in front of the picture. The colors could have been more saturated and the resolution is not to good either.
Michel Hafner (28 December 1999):
This DVD of Cat People (1982) has been mastered from an older transfer made for laserdisc. It is dated and looks more like video than film.
The film master used is a bit dirty, especially during opening and closing credits. Film steadiness is lacking as well, with several scenes suffering from distracting gate weave. Contrast rendition is not state of the art, but pretty good. Blacks are deep and there's enough shadow detail to get a good impression of the many dark scenes in this film. Colors are pretty saturated and look accurate, but have a tendency to bleed a bit into surroundings.
The transfer is not 16:9 enhanced because it's a couple of years old. It's rather fuzzy and no match for today's not enhanced top transfers. Probably the worst aspect is the noise and grain level, which is rather high and sometimes distracting. It also creates problems for the compression. Slight artifacts are visible throughout. Fortunately there are little video artifacts. There is some aliasing, but neither ugly overenhanced edges nor distracting noise suppression artifacts.
Overall impression of this DVD is fair. It's nowhere near current quality product, but it's ok given the age of the transfer and it's quite watchable. Despite that one wonders what a new top transfer would get out of this highly stylized film with its gorgeous colors and symbolic imagery. I can only hope that we'll get such a transfer some time in the next decade, so we can see this movie at home in the quality it deserves. A new 5.1 sound mix wouldn't hurt either.
Peter W. Simeon :
The soundtrack has some nice surround effects, but overall it is a bit lacking in frequency response and is also not very dynamic.
Studio: Universal Pictures
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