The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur; 1943)

This was apparently an uncharacteristically low budget Val Lewton production, but the first slaying in The Leopard Man is as slick and frightening as the famous bus sequence in Cat People, perhaps his most popular work. In a mostly silent chase, a young girl is on the run from a savage leopard. She reaches the door of her house, but she can’t convince her mother she’s telling the truth until it’s too late.  It never quite rises to the level of that first death, at least in terms of suspense or horror, but The Leopard Man is a very good thriller, with a lot of great sustained moments in which characters simply sit and talk about life. It somehow finds room in its 66 minute run time for these types of scenes without forsaking its pace.