An erotic adaptation of Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 horror classic. In the film’s first sequence, like in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Schrader establishes a connection between sacrifice and the mystical union of panthers and an ancient tribe of humans. The plot centers around a young, ambivalent woman who goes to live with her brother in New Orleans. There, she discovers that being sexually aroused can turn her into a panther. The director, taking this premise as a starting point, delineates a romantic metaphor associating the discovery of desire and the primitive obsession with sex.