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With eyes that pierce like thumbtacks offsetting the pudgy innoncence of his face, Malcolm McDowell's scoundrel-to-angel ratio is low enough that he can alternate between roles as disparate as those of author H.G. Wells in Time After Time and a carnal predator in Paul Schrader's in-name-only remake of Jacques Tourneur's Cat People. In fact, McDowell gets away with more eyelash-batting than his casual fans might expect in Time After Time, a spunky yarn in which Wells builds the time machine he only wrote about in real life, setting off a chain of events that forces him into pursuit of Jack the Ripper across the space-time continuum, all the way to San Francisco circa 1979.

One concurs with Schrader's assertion on the new Cat People DVD that British actors pull off dumb-movie exposition better than their American counterparts. But not for his multi-purpose accent alone is McDowell well cast in both films, Time After Time and Cat People. In the case of the latter, his features lend credibility to the notion that he is part leopard--while Cat People was made prior to the dawn of morphing technology, it's no difficult task to imagine McDowell's nostrilly, angular mug performing minor contortions and voilà!, the head of a giant cat. His walk, too, suggests a prowl, and his on-screen temper is more often than not a constant snarl that builds to a roar at the slightest provocation. Squint when his beastly alter ego is in close-up in Cat People and you'll swear, if only for a second, that you're looking at McDowell beneath a coat of Lon Chaney fur.

Which is why McDowell behaving like a total pussycat in the blessedly unpretentious Time After Time comes as such a pleasant surprise. Writer-turned-first-time-director Nicholas Meyer gave McDowell extra room to shed his sadomasochistic Clockwork Orange persona by hiring one of the few UK thespians more devilish than he to play The Ripper, David Warner. McDowell's lingering idolization of Warner from their Royal Shakespeare Company days lends Wells' scenes with Jack just the right tone of subservience: we begin to empathize with Wells for the master-pupil dynamic he has with London's most notorious serial killer, a former chess opponent to whom he always surrendered. Unfortunately, McDowell's other co-star prevents Time After Time from becoming a sure classic of bubblegum sci-fi: disbelief, Mary Steenburgen proves "time after time," is easier to suspend than distaste--her grating turn as Wells' paramour, a new-age bank teller, is nigh intolerable, although she and McDowell married as a consequence of working together on this movie.

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McDowell appears infrequently in Cat People--to the picture's detriment, since he's a dollop of ice cream upon the picture as Paul, a rebellious bloke itching to seduce his transcendently beautiful sister, Irena (Nastassia Kinski), ostensibly to shield the world from their family curse. Irena has designs on another man, though: Oliver (John Heard), the zookeeper who's captured Paul in his feline state, a form to which she could also eventually succumb. (Ironic aside: H.G. Wells wrote The Island of Dr. Moreau, which climaxes with a half-woman/half-puma murdering the title physician.) Schrader calls Oliver's ordinary obsession with Irena a modern-day take on the Beatrice myth, wherein Dante was forever changed by the radiant sight of Beatrice and pedestalized her--by dint of Dante's worship, she functioned as his muse. This is Schrader's quiet confession that Kinski rocked his world for a spell and hasn't a lot to do with the largely incoherent Cat People, a triumph of synthetic mood, softcore erotica, the amputation of Ed Begley, Jr., and little else. In some circles that will suffice; I myself find the picture lumbering but titillating.

Time After Time was released on DVD in a respectable presentation from Warner Home Video. The film is offered in a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen video transfer of many merits, including strong colouring and clean elements. Shadow detail wavers in shots with fog--how could it not? The accompanying Dolby 2.0 surround audio is never terribly involving, though the rear channels do help to immerse the viewer in a brief history of radio during Wells' initial time-hop. (The gag is more effective in Robert Zemeckis' Contact for the simple reason that it unfolds there in a 5.1 environment.) A nostalgic commentary track by McDowell and Meyer (recorded separately and intercut) once again brings Meyer's Sherlock Holmes fetish to the fore; fans of his excellent yak-track for the Director's Edition DVD of Star Trek II will enjoy this one about the same, especially given the candour of each participant. A text history of the time-travel genre ("It's About Time"), cast and crew bios, and trailers for the 1960 and 2002 film versions of Wells' The Time Machine round out the platter.

I wish that Cat People looked and sounded better on Universal's DVD reissue of the film, but by all accounts the disc represents a significant upgrade to the original, non-anamorphic release from Image. The 1.85:1, 16x9-enhanced image is ill-defined yet strong in the area of colour reproduction, while the 2.0 surround mix from Dolby requires a boost in volume of several notches above reference in order to comprehend the dialogue, at which point Giorgio Moroder's score pulsates captivatingly without distorting--no mean feat. In his film-length commentary, heavy-breather Schrader is unusually evasive in detailing his affair with Kinski, although one can surmise the arc of it from the particulars he sprinkles throughout. The main item on his agenda is the celebration of production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti.

In Laurent Bouzereau's 22-minute interview with Schrader ("Cat People: An Intimate Portrait by Paul Schrader"), the auteur summarizes the major arguments of his commentary--and despite lost factoids (such as the reason for Frankie Faison's mismatched voice), this talking-head is the lesser of two evils. You'll have especially done your homework if you couple "Intimate Portrait" with the discomfiting 1981 featurette "On the Set with Director Paul Schrader" (10 mins.) in place of listening to the commentary.

"A Discussion with Special Effects Makeup Effects Artist Tom Burman" (4 mins.) delivers the goods on the execution of Cat People's famed limb detachment and other gruesome setpieces. Albert Whitlock's incredible matte paintings are on display in a 3-minute montage while Robert Wise remembers mentor Val Lewton, producer of the 1942 Cat People, in a 4-minute piece. A 6-minute montage of production stills (scored to David Bowie's theme from Cat People) with clever 'cat-scratch' transitions, production notes, the trailer for Cat People (which calls the film "The Cat People" on its final page of credits), and trailers for An American Werewolf in London, Blood Simple, and The Frighteners cap off this worthy disc.-Bill Chambers