Jacques Tourneur’s The Leopard Man is a lean and effective little thriller that may be thin on plot, but gets us from one moment to the next without too many unnecessary detours. It’s refreshing to have the plot set in motion by two selfish, white outsiders coming into a community of color and wreaking havoc with their carelessness. And it’s also refreshing to have them both move from selfish, hardened narcissists to two individuals who really begin to care for others and begin to see the consequences of their actions. However, the real reason to see this is Tourneur’s use of light and shadow. He takes this simple story and imbues it with real poetry, mystery, and horror, using his images to express a deep and primal terror that his screenwriters were unable to convey through the script.
