One of Kinski’s greatest strengths as a young actress was her ability to embody seemingly contradictory personas side by side. In Paul Schrader’s erotic nightmare (and remake of Jacques Tourneur’s supernatural horror classic) about a woman—the last female descendent of an ancient race—who morphs into a deadly cat when aroused, she perfected her ability to balance timid innocence with raw sexuality. Her beautifully modulated performance is what makes the movie, for all its mythic goofiness, an emotionally potent glimpse of a young woman torn between desire and fear. With Malcolm McDowell, John Heard, and Annette O’Toole and featuring a now-classic techno score by Giorgio Moroder and a theme song by David Bowie.