Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
After a road accident in Hungary, the American honeymooners Joan and Peter and the enigmatic Dr. Werdegast find refuge in the house of the famed architect Hjalmar Poelzig, who shares a dark past with the doctor.
The Vanishing Body, O gato preto, Den sorte kat, The House of Doom, O gato negro, Den svarta katten, El gato negro, Kara Kedi, Satanás (el gato negro), Le Chat noir, Die schwarze Katze, Satanás, Черната котка, Чёрный кот, A fekete macska, 黑猫, O Gato Preto, Černá kočka, Ο πύργος του μυστηρίου, შავი კატა, Czarny Kot, Чорний кіт, 검은 고양이, 黑貓
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This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Necrophilia, Satanism, drugs, a chess game of doom, torture, a black mass with a human sacrifice, and a man being skinned the fuck alive. 1934’s pre-code The Black Cat is like a giant terror scenario onion that gets peeled back... sending us into a nightmare carnival of shadows with two mortal enemies locked in a game of death... and it’s marvelous.
Boris Karloff plays a satanic architect cult leader who lives in a insane Art Deco death mansion built over a mass grave, keeping dead bodies frozen in glass coffins for “observation”. He also keeps the daughter of his mortal enemy locked in his bedroom because that’s apparently what evil sickos did on 1934.
Bela Lugosi plays a PTSD non…
It's really not about the hapless leading couple at all. It's about the sleek but sinister edifice of modernity, literally built on the remains of recent atrocities. This modernity is physicalized by the great Karloff and his nouveau-Expressionist mansion, constant reminders of Lugosi's not-so-latent trauma. If these characters imagine their pre-WWI worlds as idyllic, even Edenic, then it only makes sense that The Black Cat veers finally into the Satanic. Look elsewhere for subtlety.
One of the scariest aspects of Ulmer's THE BLACK CAT is the architecture. A mansion of the future built by a madman who made his entire life into war and torture. A monument to evil, made clean and perfect, and modern. It isn't a castle. It's the world that will be.
we are dead, this is hell. the cat is calling from inside the house. wife under glass single most fucked up image ever.
Lugosi ripping off Karloff’s clothes and saying “do you know what I’m going to do to you now??” 👀👀👀👀👀
A perfect description of the movie in this dialogue exchange:
Karloff: "I am the greatest architect who ever lived."
Lugosi: "I am the greatest psychologist who ever lived."
American guy: "Oh I just write cheap novels...mysteries."
Which is kind of a metaphor for how this movie operates, where space and psychology take total precedence over narrative logic.
A total creative coup to take the traditionally gothic setting of horror from this era and replace it with sleek, ubermodern architecture and decor. You can modernize your exterior and build over your atrocities, but evil is evil, evil persists. Supernatural? Possibly. Baloney? Possibly not. Nestled between WWI and WWII, this seems at once prophetic and reflective in its depiction of human souls ravaged by war, decades old grudges bubbling to the surface and causing collateral damage. When Ulmer lets the camera wander through the building as Beethoven plays on the soundtrack and Karloff orates, he's showing his filmmaking is just as modern as the architecture.
75
Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat functions similarly as his Detour: a no-frills atmospheric mood-piece constructed of conventions dug up from the graves of the past, abstracted via disembodied, occult energy. The sleekness in its cold dark house does little to hide the buried secrets. Gnarly for 1934 and still shocking today.
There's almost too much to talk about packed in these 63 minutes, but I will say -- there's something very funny and kind of adorable to me about the Karloff character keeping a "Rituals of Lucifer" book on his bedside table for some light nighttime reading.
I’ve wanted to see this for awhile. A feature with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff which doesn’t disappoint. An early satanic horror movie which Boris Karloff is the satanist. Though I wish it had developed the satanism theme even more than it did. Boris Karloff being the satanist is not really a spoiler which I try to avoid. If you read any description of this movie they always reveal this very early in the description. It has some very striking scenes and the tale starts on the Orient Express which I always thank is a nice touch. If you enjoy classic black and white horror movies you will enjoy this one. You can check it out on Shudder!
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Karloff?!? KARLOFF??!!!?? THAT LIMEY COCKSUCKER ISN'T FIT TO SMELL MY SHIT!!!!
Swarthy foreigners, Bela and Boris face off for the right to touch the hair of an American woman. Probably my favorite of the Universal horror movies, really feel the Art Deco Goth vibes in this one.
Thrills/Chills: Movies weren't scary until at least the Carter administration, but there is still some pretty evil shit here. Karloff is a high priest of Satan who sold out Lugosi and thousands of other Austro-Hungarian troops to a Siberian prison camp in World War I. He then built his mod art deco mansion on their graves and took Lugosi's wife and daughter as his own. When the wife dies, he puts her perfectly…
ulmer tried to tell us that disregarding nature and our humanity in favor of relentless innovation is the devil's work but we didn't listen
