The Curse of the Cat People is a 1944 American psychological fantasy thriller film directed by Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise, produced by Val Lewton, and starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith, and Jane Randolph. Its plot follows Amy, a young girl who befriends the ghost of her father's deceased first wife, Irena, a Serbian fashion designer who descended from a race of people who could transform into cats. The film, which marks Wise's first directing credit, is a sequel to Cat People (1942) and has many of the same characters. However, it is only tangentially related to its predecessor.