"The Curse of the Cat People", which began production at the RKO Gower Street studios in Hollywood on August 26, 1943 and stopped on October 4 of that year, with additional shooting in the week of November 21, marked two directorial debuts. Gunther von Fritsch had only directed short subjects to that time, so the film marked his feature debut, but when he fell behind schedule, having gotten only halfway through the screenplay in the 18 days of filming that had been allocated, the studio assigned film editor Robert Wise to take over, which earned him his first directorial credit. When it wrapped, the film, which had done some location shooting at Malibou Lake, California, was nine days behind schedule, and had cost so much that its budget was raised from $147,000 to $212,000. As was usual with Lewton's films, the tight budget demanded the re-use of sets, here from Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942), as had already been done with the predecessor "Cat People".