Jerry Manning (Dennis O'Keefe) is the manager for a nightclub performer named Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks) and he gets the bright idea to have her bring in a leopard one night. The leopard gets spooked and runs off, only to maul a poor girl later that night. When more young victims are claimed, Jerry begins to doubt that it's still the work of the leopard.<br /><br />The New Mexico setting is a very good one for this well done Val Lewton production. It provides this incredibly spooky tale with real flavor in addition to the brooding atmosphere common to the Lewton canon. Director Jacques Tourner here had his third and final teaming with Lewton (after "The Cat People" and "I Walked with a Zombie") and he really ratchets up the tension in some scenes. The sequence in which initial victim Teresa (Margaret Landry) is obliged to walk through a tunnel under a train overpass is completely unnerving. Lewton and Tourneur do a great job of setting up the scares with use of sound and firing our imagination as to how gruesome these murders are.<br /><br />Ardel Wray wrote the screenplay (with an additional dialog credit for Edward Dein) based on the Cornel Woolrich story "Black Alibi". While it works very well as horror, as a mystery it's not so successful, with the perpetrator's identity a little too easy to guess. And the denouement isn't as satisfactory as the balance of the picture, although the motivation for the spree comes off as too creepily real, with what we now know about serial killers. And in the end, there's a bit of meditation on how people sometimes try to hide their feelings and fears behind a show of coolness and imperturbability.<br /><br />This is well worth catching for any fan of the classic style horror movies. It's a real gem with an always palpable mood and feel.<br /><br />8/10