by Joel Bocko
“Fixing a Hole” is a new series whose sole purpose is to review films that have not yet been covered on Wonders in the Dark. The theme for October is “Universal Horror.” Some spoilers are discussed below.
•
The Black Cat (1934/United States/directed by Edgar G. Ulmer)
stars Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi
written by Edgar G. Ulmer, Peter Ruric, and Tom Kilpatrick from Edgar Allan Poe’s story • photographed by John J. Mescall • designed by Charles D. Hall • music by Heinz Roemheld • makeup by Jack P. Pierce
The Story: On a dark and stormy night, the Allisons, a honeymooning couple, find themselves sidetracked by an auto accident. Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi), whom they met on the train, takes them the home of architect Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff), a camp commandant who mistreated Werdegast during World War I. The two men fight a battle of will and wit, with the hapless newlyweds caught in the middle.
_____________
What do secluded mansions, wartime prison camps, violent fear of black cats, modernist architecture, satanic cults, semi-incestuous marriages, floating corpses, and sadomasochistic feuds have to do with one another? Not very much, come to think of it. Except that you can find them all in The Black Cat, along with wickedly stylized sets, idiosyncratic classical music, and – in their first pairing – two pitch-perfect larger-than-life performances from Universal’s biggest horror stars. Neither one cracks a smile or lets a wink betray that they’re in on the joke (though Karloff’s arched eyebrow occasionally suggests a saucy self-awareness), leading us to wonder if it is a joke at all. As he would later with the noir Detour, Edgar G. Ulmer twists genre conventions, stylistic norms, and tonal expectations into perfect pretzels, until we’re left wondering whether the result is subversively brilliant or merely ridiculous.
This ambiguity sets The Black Cat apart from some of the other great Universal films, like Bride of Frankenstein or The Old Dark House, where we know we’re watching something just as much a comedy as a horror film. The Black Cat has a sense of humor, but it’s a very dark, deadpan, sardonic sense. We laugh at certain exaggerated reactions (Lugosi’s ferocious screech and knife-hurling hysterics whenever he sees a black cat), chuckle along with some of the more bizarre lines and line readings (“Baloney? Perhaps not” and just about everything Karloff lisps), and grin ear-to-ear at the out-of-left-field plot developments (I always love the moment when Karloff casually picks up a satanic text, as if the movie didn’t already have enough strangeness going for it).
Yet we also marvel at the sheer bravado of the film, admiring its sleek art direction (what a brilliant, bizarre stroke to turn “the old dark house” of horror lore into an Art Deco palace), cool-as-shit shots (my favorite being the rack-focus as Karloff fondles a small statue while the young lovers embrace) and iconically charismatic performances, especially Karloff’s. There’s a nice moment with the amiable square Mr. Allison (David Manners) tries to ingratiate himself with Poelzig. The contemptuous architect asks him, “Do you play chess?” The American wisecracks about playing a good hand of poker and Poelzig responds with aloof impatience, “Well, if you don’t mind, I think we’ll go on with our game.” Translation: “Back off buddy, we’re chewing scenery here, and you’re spoiling our appetite.”
Most of all, the movie is fantastically weird. That aforementioned statue-fondling is only one of many moments where a dark, demented sexuality swims to the surface. There’s Poelzig’s disturbing co-option of Dr. Werdegast’s wife, whose murder is insinuated, and then his daughter, whose murder is suggested offscreen in one of the film’s more disturbing moments. There’s the intense smoldering gaze Poelzig fixes upon Mrs. Allison (Jacqueline Wells, cute as a button and quite foxy when narcoticized); this only become creepier when he reveals that his interest is primarily “spiritual” (i.e. he wants to carve her up in a Luciferian rite amongst tuxedoed acolytes). Then there’s the salacious way the good doctor ties his nemesis to a rack at the end of the movie, ripping Poelzig’s shirt off with righteous fury (Lugosi looks positively possessed while hissing, “Have you ever seen an animal skinned alive? That’s what I’m going to do to you!”). The bare-chested Karloff’s nearly indifferent reaction, as if he’s quietly awaiting a pain he will savor, sells the whole act as some kind of bizarre kinky blood ritual, the logical conclusion to the night’s Black Mass, perhaps even planned all along.
Ultimately, Werdegast gets shot by the clueless Mr. Allison, and it’s no wonder. From the moment he ominously and unwelcomely steps into the train car, Werdegast’s motives are suspect, his manner suspicious, and his bearing unsettling. Nobody seems to trust that he’s actually one of the good guys, and though the narrative bears him out, we know at heart he’s just as demented as Poelzig. And we wouldn’t want them any other way. The Allisons can have their honeymoon on the Orient Express; we’ll stay on at Chez Poelzig and dig our dance with the Devil.
This is a good Universal horror film, and as you well say Joel, the humour is dark and really difficult to find, as opposed to the great Universal horror films like The Invisible Man and The Bride of Frankenstein, or even the spanish version of Dracula (or the Lugosi version, while deadly serious manages to have some discomforting weird moments that you can’t help but laugh at them).
That’s why this movie, while it has a great atmosphere, never connected to me, and I can’t say that I consider it one of the best of the Universal canon, because there are others that are better than this one, are more playful and sport better characterizations from these two magnificent actors. Besides, given that the focus of the movie is NOT on these two, the movie instantly becomes a little bit dull.
Still, a **** movie!
It’s not that I think the humor is difficult to find, just that the film never quite comes off as a comedy, despite having so many funny moments (and I do think it’s one of the more playful films I’ve seen). There’s something too fundamentally weird and disturbing about it. But I like that quality – that it’s hilarious and creepy at the same time.
And while the Allison are there (and I don’t mind the Mrs. so much), I think Lugosi and Karloff tend to dominate every scene and even have a lot of scenes that the couple aren’t in, so I don’t mind there being other characters who are “supposedly” our leads since they’re so easily bumped to the sideline (“I think we’ll continue to go on with our game” as Karloff says).
Also I just rewatched Invisible Man (it was going to be the other film I reviewed for this month, but I ended up picking another one instead) and found it had too many longeurs though all the special-effect stuff is great, and it has to be one of the best lead performances ever where you never actually see the actor (a small category I suppose, duplicated only in the era of motion-capture CGI). It’s too lumpy for me overall, but it’s got some really cool sequences.
I like this film alot…
Stress LIKE… I’m not a lover of this film the same way I am of FRANKENSTEIN or DRACULA. I don’t know why, it has many of the elements I LOVED in those other movies, but this one almost seemed, ummm, dead.
I never got the rythm of the film and everything seems to happen in spurts that you wonder if the fil m is every gonna pick up steam, get running and hit its stride. Then, before you know it, bang, the film is over and I always feel like I’m left saying: “That’s it? What the fuck happened?”
Don’t get me wrong. It’s well written, visually interesting and the performances are damned good for material like this….
I just liked this…
I LOVED FRANKENSTEIN, THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and THE MUMMY…
Funny.
But, you can’t turn my misgivings against what is, absolutely, a terrific read and fun essay from our dear friend JOEL.
Though reading about the Universal horror films as a kid is part of what got me into movies, I ended up disappointed with some of the films when I finally saw them. Ultimately, my favorites are the ones that are half-funny, half-creepy like this, Bride, & The Old Dark House. And I really dig Lugosi, so I have a soft spot for Dracula though Frankenstein is clearly a better movie. All in all, a lot of these films seem to have too much padding for me, even in their short run-times. I guess you feel that way about this one, but to me all the moments with Lugosi & Karloff (which is most of the movie) are chock-full of great details so I’m not waiting for too much to happen.
Dennis managed to state my own reaction to this fllm better than I could.
The Art Deco sets always gave this film a bizarre quality that can’t be found in any of the other Universal horrors. At times Karloff, a great actor, seemed to be sleep-walking through this role, but one could never be sure if this was exactly the intent. The use of classical music seems like overkill, but over the years it has become synonymous with the mood and almost mock serious tone. This is a tremendous review that deals with just about everything one could or would ever want to think, when considering this classic horror film.
I agree with Sam below about the effect being more meditative than sleepwalking – I love Karloff in this film and listed Poelzig as one of my all-time favorite characters in a post I did a couple weeks ago. Agreed that the music is overkill but works. Thanks for the compliments!
What’s key in discussing THE BLACK CAT is what you state at the outset – it’s maddening ambiguity. Of course this is what has long made this the most audacious and thought-provoking film in the Universal horror lineup by leaps and bounds, and it’s one that showcases the film’s enterprising director taking his boldest strokes yet, even with the expansive complicity of art director Charles D. Hall. Karloff seems in a state of meditation (as opposed to the sleep-walking you propose, Frank) but the arched eyebrows are a hoot, no matter how you take the. The name of his character – Hjalmar Poelzig – (pronounced PEARL-ZIG) is one of cinema’s greatest conceits and Lugosi’s “Dr. Vitus Werdegast” isn’t far behind. Yes, the arc deco and expressionism is what visually distinguishes it and the over-the-top use of classical music (Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” and Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture” are given generous transcription) to help give it a kind of “Phantom of the Paradise” cult status, a contentioned bolstered by the dialogue, of which this is an all-time gem:
David Manners: “Sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney to me”.
Bela Lugosi: “Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not”.
A wholly brilliant entry in this terrifically delicious series, so timely and so apt in filling in “fixing the holes!”
Yeah, our conversation last week at the restaurant helped me frame the film somewhat, and inclined me to do it now instead of saving it for Halloween. Nice notation of the classical pieces, watching it this time I realized there was more score than I remembered (meaning film music, not just classical excerpts) so I wondered if I had blown the classical aspect – so memorable – out of proportion. Apparently not. Glad you like the film so much too (as I say below)!
As far as audacity is concerned, Sam, I see a dividing line between the “juvenile” and “adult” Universal horror films. Now, by “juvenile” I simply mean the ones I loved as a kid–The Mummy, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man; the ones that had a thrill-ride tone, comparatively speaking, more scary-fun than disturbing–and those that impressed me growing up–The Wolf Man (such a melancholy thing, Cheney’s beaten-down Brooklyn mug so glum), Dracula (a movie of menacing silences, no gore but plenty of Edward Gorey)–and the twin jewels in the crown, Bride of Frankenstein and The Black Cat. The former is a truly wicked thing, as fey as Polidori lunching in a crypt, as darkly existential as Kafka (“We belong dead,” the Monster intones at the end). But The Black Cat goes all the way (ahem), arch in its dare-you-to-laugh comedy and polymorphously perverse in its unexpected pleasure-zones. Sorry, but I don’t see the blank spots or clinkers. You’d need Guy Maddin or David Lynch (maybe Kenneth Anger or the Quay Brothers) to make anything to rival it.
PMarasa:
I love THE BLACK CAT now. I loved it exceedingly as a kid, and I will fiercely defend anything about it, as I attempted to in my comment here. There are no dark spots or clinkers, only delicious camp and marvelous invention presented in the most appreciable way possible.
I love love love love the film, and will say it even more here if it helps.
Very interesting comment; though I don’t quite align with some of it (Wolf Man didn’t quite work for me) I agree that there are certain ones which seem to hold up better into adulthood. I love Lynch and like Maddin (and like Anger a lot and love love love the Quays), but what I like so much The Black Cat is that it exists in that borderzone between conscious and unconscious of its wackiness (I mean, I’m sure they were fairly conscious but the film itself, with its genre codes and stylistic conceits makes this hard to read). Bride & Old Dark House, I feel, are a little more in the self-aware zone, which has its own delights.
Interesting you place Dracula in the grown-up category. I’ve always felt that Frankenstein is better but that personally I’d probably put Dracula on first.
Btw, if you like Lynch, Anger, & Quay (no Maddin I’m afraid) check out the link I included above in the outro – all will be making appearances (one Anger yesterday, and another in a few days, with Quays to come later and a handful of Lynchs, less than I’d expect of myself, down the line).
I agree, BLACK CAT is just about the best Universal Horror for me, along with BRIDE (even if I consider that and the predecessor in a virtual dead heat). But I’ll be slotting them all where I think they fit soon when I unveil my top 500 Horror films.
And I should say I like this more then most of the Universal’s because I like Ulmer’s aesthetic better then pretty much all those Horror directors back then (save only perhaps Whale).
I also like many of the MGM’s too (MAD LOVE specifically).
Agreed. I look forward to that list!
–Oh, and Joel: No need, I hope, to mention what a fine piece you wrote. Got me all worked up, as you can see in my earlier comment.
Thanks guys (very kind words, pmarasa, and welcome to the series)! And though I love hearing different povs, it’s still nice to have some similar perspectives to my own, after the more lukewarm takes on the film! (I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one who liked it, haha).
A fun piece on a fun film. This first combat of Karloff and Lugosi is probably a milestone of self-consciousness in the horror genre for placing the bland Allisons (I do enjoy how they playfully pronounce “purrrl-zig”) in the crossfire between the two already-legendary horror men and making a kind of dark joke of it all. For all of Bela’s hysteria, Boris’s attitude speaks for the film itself: this is what we do; if you don’t like it, get out of the way. This is an early horror film that celebrates itself as such, and that may be why a lot of concerned citizens were outraged by it — it is a pre-Code film, no? The later Karloff-Lugosi encounters won’t have the same charge, but they’re still fun in their own ways.
I checked it out, Samuel – yeah it missed the Code enforcement deadline by less than 2 months! I think Old Dark House was also a milestone in horror self-consciousness, ironic since it followed so quickly on the heels of the films that established the genre (or at least its 30s incarnation) in Hollywood – as one critic noted, “subverting the very conventions it was creating”.
@Sam Wilson Bela Hysteria? Boris attitude? What the fuck are you yapping about, you stupid bitch? And Karloff never said that, dumbfuck!
The most ‘audacious’ thing about this film for me is the way it completely ignores the Edgar Allan Poe source material, only pilfering the famous title. In the end it works against odds.
Haha, yeah, really a lot of those Universals do that don’t they? Grab a Poe title, and then just run with it.
The funniest part is they didn’t even work the title let alone the content! Like, if they had taken the title “the black cat” and made a movie about a black cat that had nothing to do with Poe, it would have been slightly more logical, if less fun. As I recall The Raven doesn’t have much to do with “The Raven”, or “a raven”, either…
The Black Cat has always been one of my two favorite Universal Horror films. Putting Karloff and Lugosi on the screen at the same time… brilliant. The fact that there is no monster roaming around with yak hair or grease paint/putty is even more remarkable. The monsters are all too human and more disturbing because of it. Other than the weak comedic segment involving the two policemen arguing over visiting their respective villages (which was lifted wholesale from a similar painfully unfunny scene in Florey’s Murders In The Rue Morgue) I find The Black Cat a worthy early entry into the horror genre.
A good point and one I meant to mention in the piece but forgot about. It’s weird, I LOVE monsters or creatures in movies (one reason I appreciated The Beast) but my favorite Universals are the ones with all-too-human villains rather than monsters. Here’s why, I suspect: because the monster movies are weak whenever the monsters aren’t on screen (which, for a variety of reasons I’m sure, is a lot of the movie) whereas in the non-monster movies, the human villains are onscreen a lot more. I actually think the village scene is kind of funny here, just as part of the general random strangeness, and I think it works a lot better than the one in Murders, which as I recal just stretches out into eternity and is timed really slowly…