The Black Cat (1934)

Film: The Black Cat (1934)
Stars: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

Throughout their careers, Bela Lugosi & Boris Karloff appeared in eight films together, the size and scale of which changed dramatically depending on the movie.  There are a lot of old-school Hollywood rumors about Lugosi & Karloff's relationship, ranging from them being friends to being mortal enemies, and the truth seems to lie somewhere in the middle.  Lugosi clearly resented Karloff's success (once Frankenstein was released, there was never really a point in Karloff's career where Lugosi was close to usurping it, even if in Son of Frankenstein Lugosi got the better reviews), but they worked together regularly.  Part of Lugosi's problem was that he never really translated into non-horror films in the way that Karloff did, and also because he never played Dracula again after 1931 until Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.  In 1934, though, they would have been at least somewhat in the same vicinity of stardom, and so getting them in a movie like The Black Cat is a bit of a coup, and shows both actors toward the peak of their horror powers.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Black Cat cites the Edgar Allen Poe short story as inspiration, but it has nothing to do with that tale (and as that might be my favorite Poe story other than "The Tell-Tale Heart," I have read it many times) other than both featuring a black cat .  The movie is instead about Peter (Manners) and Joan Alison (Bishop), a handsome young newlywed couple who are on a train, and share a cabin with a psychiatrist named Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi), who has just left a prison camp in Siberia after 15 years (super common, obviously-this always happens to me on public transit too).  He is set to visit his "old friend" Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff) and when the bus that is carrying all three breaks down, the couple have to visit him too.  Once there, Werdegast confronts Poelzig over his treachery during WWI, and of killing his wife.  It turns out he didn't kill her, at least not at first, but married her, and then after she died, married Werdegast's daughter, who is still alive.  As the film continues, we find out that Poelzig is a member of a satanic cult, and wants to sacrifice Joan to Lucifer.  In the end, Joan & Peter escape, but Werdegast is not able to save his daughter, who is murdered by Poelzig, whom Werdegast then skins alive, and eventually blows up the building they're in (when Joan & Peter have fled), killing all of Poelzig's satanic cult along with Poelzig& Werdegast themselves.

That's a lot of plot for what is a 70-minute movie (plot is never in short supply in old-school Hollywood horror).  Yet it works really well-there were only a couple of moments in the script where I was a bit lost (specifically around the daughter-it wasn't clear initially who she was, though you figure out after a second).  As a result, this is a brisk, really well-kept horror film, and one that's genuinely creepy (if not downright scary).  Poelzig is a disgusting, tortured man, and Werdegast is played with enough malice that his true intentions are not always known (this is a weird comparison, but I kept thinking he had a similar morality to Sweeney Todd in that he's fine with people dying to get an answer to what happened to his wife-and-daughter).  And this film, while obviously not showing some of the scenes (you did not see Karloff skinned alive, obviously), it finds a way to throw incest, necrophilia, and torture all into one little pre-Code movie.

As for the two leading men, I have to say Karloff's better, and not necessarily because he gets the better part.  Lugosi's final scene is really good, some of his better acting outside of Igor (for my money, his best character even if it isn't his most iconic), but Karloff just nails this devious man.  The best scene of the movie is him playing chess with Lugosi, whose Werdegast is trying to win Joan & Peter's freedom from Poelzig.  The way that Karloff says "even the phone is dead" is dripping with terror & camp, and it's marvelous (hopefully this link is still valid when you read this review).  All-in-all, a great outing between the two actors/rivals.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The House of Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death