Universal released two major horror remakes in 1982: The Thing and Cat People. At the time, Cat People actually made more money worldwide, but in the 40+ years since, The Thing has been reevaluated and elevated to classic status, whereas Cat People remains, if not exactly forgotten, somewhat overlooked and underrated. It wouldn't surprise me if David Bowie's theme song “Putting Out Fire” was loved by people who weren't even aware it was recorded for a film.
But it was a big studio horror movie from that era, so naturally, there was a novelization timed for its release. Interestingly, the author was not one of the usual adapters of the time (i.e. Alan Dean Foster) but Gary Brandner, an accomplished author who penned the novel The Howling, which was turned into a movie the year before. As far as I can tell, it's the only novelization he ever published.
Even more interesting is that the cover touts that it's based on a story by DeWitt Bodeen (who wrote the 1942 film) without mentioning screenwriter Alan Ormsby. Ormsby's script (which was then rewritten by director Paul Schrader) differs in many ways from Bodeen's original take on the story, curiously, Ormsby's name isn't mentioned anywhere in the book. Suffice it to say, it's clearly taken from his version of the script, albeit not without several changes, small and large, from the finished film.
One big diversion happens right in the first few pages, with the flashback to the ancient race of werecats. In the movie, we see a lone woman roped to a tree and sacrificed, but in Brandner's take (and presumably, an earlier draft that wasn't beholden to major studios rules on such things), it's a group of four children who are offered up to the beasts.
We then get another flashback scene with our lead character, Irena, and her brother Paul as children, depicting the moment when their father murdered their mother and then killed himself. Their deaths are barely mentioned in the finished film, so it was interesting to see the tragedy unfold in full while also providing a few hints about their animal nature.
We are then treated to yet another big scene with no equivalent in the film, with Irena (Nastassja Kinski) on a plane and being comforted/somewhat hit on by another passenger, whereas the movie cuts to her already in the airport. It's not until about page 30 that the book starts to match up to the screen version when Irena meets her brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell), and he takes her to the family home.
From this point, it starts to more or less follow Schrader's film as we know it, but there are still a number of changes along the way that make for a pretty interesting read. One of the biggest is that the character of Alice (Beverly O'Toole) is much nicer to Irena in the movie than she was in whatever draft Brandner was working from, as the two are always antagonistic here.
There's an elderly worker who helps Irena learn how to work in the gift shop instead of Alice, and no scene of the two women going out to eat and talking about their sex lives (or lack thereof, in Irena's case). There is more throughout about Alice's relationship with Ollie (John Heard), making it clear that they were ongoing but casual lovers, whereas the final cut mostly just suggests she has unrequited feelings for him.
Ollie (whose name is Yates here, a change from the original's now-amusing name of Oliver Reed) is mostly the same as he was in the movie. He's a little more flirtatious with Irena (and her with him in turn), and there are more scenes with his boss Judson (played onscreen by John Larroquette), but there's nothing too significant about these moments, and the character's story beats are identical.
For more Cat People, check out FANGORIA #18 from April 1982.
Assuming that Brandner was more or less sticking to the draft he was working from instead of coming up with his own material, it seems that Schrader's changes mostly revolved around the two female characters (as well as the two victims, both of whom get more characterization here), leaving Ollie and Paul's scenes more or less intact.
There is a little more with Joe (Ed Begley Jr), however. In the movie, he is cleaning Paul-cat's cage when he is mauled and dies, but here, he is presented as an angry and incompetent employee who harbors a grudge against the beast for throwing up on his clothes. He is fired for antagonizing the animal and then later returns to get his revenge, which is when he is attacked (and takes longer to die). Clearly, this was a case of condensing a subplot about a minor character to keep things moving, but it does add a sense of menace to the film's middle, which is otherwise pretty mild in that department.
Another suspense scene that the film lacks is a reprise of the original's pet store scene, albeit with new context. Here, Irena accidentally gives Ollie's pet parakeet a heart attack when she tries to play with it, so she goes to a pet store hoping to find another to give him as an apology (to her credit, she doesn't plan to try to pretend it's the same bird). However, once she arrives, every bird in the store starts to react in the same panicked way that Ollie's did, forcing the shopkeeper to make her leave so that the birds calm down.
There's also a scene that was probably removed because there was no way to do it justice. If you're a fan of this property, you'll know Irena and her brother come from a race of beings who turn into leopards after they have sex, and only by killing someone can they return to human form. Virgin Irena is unable to resist Ollie's charms any longer, and they make love.
In the film, she briefly paws at him before running off, but here she sticks around and keeps kind of playing with Ollie, even (gently) putting his head in her big mouth the way any normal housecat does with affection to its owner or a fellow cat it's bathing. (This pays off a line from Paul about “taking his head in your mouth like an egg,” which remains in the movie.)
Outside of a very expensive (and given the time, probably still somewhat fake-looking) animatronic, there would be no way to film this moment in any believable fashion, so I assume that's why it was cut, but it was certainly a nice surprise here, especially as by this point the story was following the film so closely outside of Alice and Irena's increased jealousy of each other.
In short, it's the best kind of novelization in that it is taken from an older draft that complements some elements that remain in the film, while offering a glimpse at what might have been if budgets/effects were in perfect synchronicity with the script's ideas. If you hated Schrader's update, there's not much here that can change your mind, since the changes are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things (if I were to write a one paragraph summary of the movie and one of the novel, they wouldn't be any different). All you need to do on your end is cue up the Bowie song/Giorgio Moroder score in the background as you read.
