“In the fraction of a second’s pause that followed, she saw the boy’s eyes swollen downward at the floor. A tongue of red was licking out at his bare foot from under the door. Just that in size and shape, the tip of a human tongue. But it was in flux, fluid. Right as their eyes beheld it it was already widening, lengthening, glittering with its own volatility.”
~ from Black Alibi, by Cornell Woolrich, adapted by Ardel Wray and Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur as THE LEOPARD MAN.
I’m actually kind of shocked at how close the set-pieces of Woolrich’s book are to the scenes in the movie, though it has to be said Tourneur’s choice of shots is more lucid and evocative than Woolrich’s choice of prose, at least in this case, the famous blood-under-the-door scene. However, CW has even more horror to bestow upon us ~
“He had snatched the door inward upon them before the mother’s slowly gathering scream had time to leave her. He jumped agilely back as though something had bitten him.
It was as though clots of red mud had been pelted at the outside of the door, until, adhering, they formed a sort of spattered mound up against it. There were rags mixed in with it, and snarls of hair, and even tiny crumbs of coral, broken off a string.
The mass sidled, disintegrated all over the threshold.”
Eww!
shadowplay 