The Black Cat (1934)

 

Director: Edgar G. Ulmer

Screenplay: Peter Ruric, Edgar G. Ulmer and Peter Ruric              

Inspired by the short story by Edgar Allen Poe

Cast: Boris Karloff as Hjalmar Poelzig; Bela Lugosi as Dr. Vitus Werdegast; David Manners as Peter Alison; Julie Bishop as Joan Alison; Egon Brecher as The Majordomo; Harry Cording as Thamal; Lucille Lund as Karen

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) / An Abstract Candidate

 

Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not. There are many things under the sun.

This is not a real adaptation of the "immortal Allen Poe" classic, before any reader who has never heard of this title asks. The irony is that, over decades, Poe's work would be subjectively appropriated in stories which have the loosest of connections to his work. Menahem Golan, whilst running 21st Century Film Corporation, produced Luigi Cozzi's 1989 The Black Cat, and had that film renamed from Demons 6: De Profundis (1989) because they had been adaptating Poe titles, regardless if it had any real connections to the Black Cat story. That film had Bango Tango, shots in outer space and was a Suspiria meta-sequel. Following Universal Studio turning Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) into Bela Lugosi wanting to find a bride for his intelligent gorilla, or The Raven (1935) having Lugosi a Poe obsessive who uses the torture dungeon he built in tribute as intended, this Black Cat is however an eerie horror film, a metaphor for World War I, which is perplexing to witness in its in one hour length.

I also do not think Poe would appreciate this version of The Black Cat. The actual short story is an abstinence tale of the ruin of alcohol, significant from an author whose image has been connected for some to being addict himself, destroying a man through an act of cruelty to a black cat which escalates to murdering his wife, his violent side opened by the alcohol and his neurosis. Poe would have appreciated this tale of revenge, as a man who penned The Cask of Amontillado, which has a perverse sexual edge too. Only the Satanism involved might have seen too gauche for Poe's tastes in mind to his literature.

The Black Cat is arguably as well the weirdest film ever to be produced under the Universal horror era unless anyone wants to make a claim for a dark horse, or James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932), another worthy candidate for that title. Structurally it can be arguable to call it a mess, but you witness something which is compelling, befittingly involving an American mystery writer Peter (David Manners), on his honeymoon with his wife Joan (Julie Bishop), finding himself stuck in this morbid tale set in Hungary, where Dr. Vitus Werdegast, Lugosi in a rare heroic role, returns to his homeland after WWI for revenge on Hjalmar Poelzig, played by Boris Karloff, who betrayed him in the war and has literally built his modern art deco home on top of the war field their fellow troops died upon.  It is not a poor critical opinion to make when, based upon a war criminal and one of his victims coming for revenge, this exists as a premise where a mansion built on a mass graveyard in a battle zone in Hungary, impossible in hindsight to not to consider (whilst referencing World War I) how World War II now paints this film. As much as this is its own peculiar genre tale meant to sell as the other famous Universal horror b-pictures, this side to the film's plot cannot be ignored by history itself even in coincidence. 

The film is strange. The black cat is only of note as Lugosi abruptly kills one, despite being the hero, out of an irrational fear. Set in a conventional set up, where a carriage accident leaves Peter and Joan stuck between the war that will transpire between Vitus and Hjalmar, you have in despite of Universal's traditional b-horror aesthetic, still rich but one grounded in comparison to its content, its perverse touches. It is not even just that Hjalmar has Vitus' wife preserved in the former gun turret room, but little shots, like in the foreground Karloff clutching a nude female statue suggestively when he sees Joan for the first time, as sexual as you can get but easy to miss in the cinematic language.

Boris Karloff menaces the screen with the elegance expected but underrated from the English actor, looking like a cult leader with his haircut and elaborate dressing gown, managing even to make chess and saying the phone is dead eerie. Bela Lugosi getting a deserved heroic role is special, seeing the two together what sold the film back then but also special to see still even if they would appear together other time. This is also a rare showing of Lugosi's charisma, as a theatre actor of great regard back in his homeland of Hungary before he came to Hollywood, constructed by the character being mentally damaged prisoner of war out for revenge, again in mind to the real horrors beyond cinema. That David Manners and Julie Bishop, as the two North American cast members, are out-shadowed by these two horror titans, too conventional among everyone else in the film, helps the film perfectly in hindsight. Manners at one point wishes he went to Niagara Falls instead, which now as well as being a legitimately funny line emphasises the purpose of Peter as a character for me now, that he has entered this morbid fairy tale as a figure who, honestly, contributes nothing but accidentally shots the wrong person and is the bystander, another of the curious touches which adds positives to the film. The two American leads are ones put in films like this in Universal's history, even in the modern day, as a step-in for a viewer, and in The Black Cat Joan, as a potential victim of 000, but especially her husband Peter, feels so much more vital now seeing the film as the hapless figure, our representation, stuck in this world as elaborate as the mansion is with its secret rooms, secret corridors that can be unlocked, and has dynamite set up that, with a flick of the switch, will blow everything up, logic not up to question.

A lot of The Black Cat is surprisingly adult, just at the cusp of the Hays Code finally regulating American cinema, where in the trappings of an Art Deco stage set you get preserved human beings, an quasi-incestuous dominant sexual relationship between someone raised as a daughter and now is a figure loved as an adult woman in Karen (Lucille Lund), Vitus' still-living daughter, and a hero still stroking the hair of the white bread male protagonist's sleeping girlfriend in the train, and with an erratic fear of black cats involving throwing knives. That there is Satanism is a little silly, a contrived inclusion, but in this pulp world, it just comes off as a regular expectation when Karloff's bedtime reading is Satanic devil worshiping texts. Even Julie Bishop gets a sequence almost in a trance as strange as everything else which happens, a sequence where Joan wanders in as a sleepwalker which warns of the haze this film has, the first moment where The Black Cat suggests it is not even like the other Universal horror films of the period.

And  I cannot forget the human flaying, which is not a spoiler because, while you do not see it onscreen, I am amazed that got passed in an early 1930s Hollywood, as you are not prepared for how gruesome and abruptly dealt with as it is. It is arguably a moment for thirties horror cinema which, when seen, is truly a one-off especially for how unexpectedly gruesome it is. It is the capstone to the film The Black Cat, which is to The Old Dark House as the two films, one of the most idiosyncratic films made from the Universal horror productions. Alongside Detour (1945), Edgar G. Ulmer has a cult status which has made him of note as even an auteur. Sadly, falling in love with Shirley Beatrice Kassler, who was married to independent producer Max Alexander, nephew of Universal studio head Carl Laemmle, during the production of The Black Cat, did doom any chance of a Hollywood career just when it began, an aspect of Ulmer's life thankfully contrasted by the fact his marriage to Shirley lasted the rest of his life. A collaborator on his films in poverty row afterwards, and the head of preserving his work after he gained considerable attention, their marriage was arguably the better than having that Hollywood career, as it was a sincere romance where they collaborated in cinema still¹. More so as Ulmer was a man whose swings between independent and public domain titles, between Yiddish language films to a nudie naturism picture, paints a fascinating figure that fascinates to the modern day, whose most well regarded film, his most commercial, is naturally The Black Cat, happily just as idiosyncratic as the life he had in the pictures.

Abstract Spectrum: Eerie/Psychotronic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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1) Shirley Ulmer: Queen of B-movies, as screenplay writer and script girl, written by Ronald Bergan for The Guardian as an obituary on September 4th 2000.