The Black Cat (DVD)

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat slinks to screen life for the first time in this 1934 chiller starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff (their initial of eight films together). Despite the credit, this film has nothing whatsoever to do with the author’s 1843 story, which was about a man murdering his wife but giving himself away by inadvertently bricking her pet puss up along with her body. There is an inky feline who shows up four or five times throughout the proceedings to scare Lugosi’s character, but that’s about it.

Disappointment from felis silvestris catus fans notwithstanding, this movie sure to blaze the cockles of any vintage horror-lover’s heart — it’s considered a classic, and deservedly so. Fast paced, atmospheric and well-acted (though the style is dated), The Black Cat begins in Hungary on the Orient Express where a honeymooning American couple (David Manners, Jacqueline Wells) are getting ready to enjoy the solitude of their private car… Enter a dark and mysterious stranger, Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi) who promptly tells them of an old friend he plans on meeting after spending 15 years as POW. (While that doesn’t sound very mysterious, it is… the doctor’s hiding his true motive.)

The trio shares a motorcar after detraining and as luck would have it, they find themselves in a fine pickle when the vehicle overturns. It just so happens that they’re taken in by the nearest homeowner — Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff), the very man Werdegast was expecting to be reunited with. It’s soon revealed that Werdegast has actually come seeking deadly revenge against Poelzig, who was not only responsible for the doctor’s wartime misery, but who also spirited away Werdegast’s wife, Karen (Lucille Lund), and their young daughter.

As the story unfolds, we’re offered up a smorgasbord of horrors that include murder, Satanism complete with a Black Mass, preserved dead bodies in the basement, mind control, a chess game played with the soul of a young woman as the stakes, and of course, well-timed moments of paralyzing ailurophobia.

Running just over an hour long, The Black Cat skulks along at a breakneck pace, which, upon your first viewing, will have you so breathless you don’t necessarily care about its low-budget induced technical imperfections and stagey presentation. Despite the overuse of masters, the modernist Bauhaus sets are gloriously bleak and spare, in keeping with director Edgar G. Ulmer’s earlier association with the master of German silent films, F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Sunrise). The soundtrack is also noteworthy: in an era when movie music was usually limited to the titles and credits, there’s an almost continuous background score purring menacingly throughout The Black Cat.

Other cinematic versions of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat include: The Black Cat (1941), The Black Cat (1966), Lucio Fulci’s The Black Cat (1981), and Luigi Cozzi’s The Black Cat (1990). The story is also featured in the Poe anthologies Tales of Terror (1962) starring Peter Lorre, and Dario Argento’s segment in Two Evil Eyes (1990).

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson

ABOUT BELA LUGOSI

Hungarian-born Bela Lugosi rocketed to international fame after starring in the 1931 film Dracula - a role he had played several years earlier on Broadway. The enormously successful film helped usher in a new era of horror movies and Lugosi’s charisma and mysterious aura set the standard by which all future silver screen vampires would be judged. His captivating talent for playing the villain netted him a career playing a myriad of monsters, murderers and mad scientists in film and television. Since his death in 1959, Lugosi’s popularity and status as a cult figure have continued to grow, aided in no small part by Martin Landau’s Oscar-winning portrayal of the actor in Tim Burton’s 1994 critically acclaimed film Ed Wood.

SYNOPSES OF THE COLLECTION

Murders in the Rue Morgue

Based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe, Murders in the Rue Morgue is a haunting atmospheric classic heavily influenced by the German Expressionist classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. A deranged scientist, Dr. Mirakle (Bela Lugosi), searches Paris for a prospective bride for his pet gorilla.

The Black Cat (reviewed above)

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi star in this shocking horror classic of Satanism and murder. A bus crash on a lonely Austrian road compels American honeymooners Joan (Jacqueline Wells) and Peter Alison (David Manners) to spend the night at the house of Herr Poelzig (Karloff), a sinister looking man engaged in an intense death-feud with Dr. Werdegast (Lugosi), whom the couple met on the Orient Express.

The Raven

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi star in this macabre horror classic inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Dr. Richard Vollin (Lugosi) is a brilliant but unstable surgeon with a morbid obsession for instruments of torture. When escaped killer Edmond Bateman (Karloff) approaches the surgeon for a new face, Vollin agrees only after convincing Bateman to assist him in a sinister plan of revenge.

The Invisible Ray

On a scientific expedition to Africa, Dr. Janos Rukh (Boris Karloff) discovers a meteorite containing an unknown element a thousand times more powerful than radium. Contaminated by his contact with the element, Rukh finds himself killing everyone he touches. His friend Dr. Benet (Bela Lugosi) develops an antidote, but its effects are short-lived and result in unintended side-effects.

Black Friday

Boris Karloff plays brain specialist Dr. Sovac, who illegally transplants part of injured gangster Red Cannon's brain into the head of his dying friend Professor Kingsley (Stanley Ridges). The operation saves Kingley's life, but transforms him into a Jekyll-Hyde who is sometimes his timid self, sometimes the vicious Cannon.