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There are some great moments in this film: some that rank among my favorites of all time, and William Peter Blatty shows that he is a very capable director, and has a good eye for setting up an effective scene. There are a few slow spots, but they still help to give some background information and move the narrative along.

This is the first pairing of Universal's two biggest stars of the time, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. David Manners plays American mystery writer Peter Allison with his typical competence. Manners represents the audience's point of view, an outside observer. As he learns more about the situation, so do we.
The story begins on a train, with Peter Allison and his new bride, Joan, on their honeymoon. Due to an error regarding accommodations, they meet Dr. Vitus Werdegast, and agree to share their compartment on the train with him. Through a series of mishaps, they follow Dr. Werdegast to the home of his old acquaintance, the great architect, Hjalmar Poelzig. Poelzig is now a priest in a satanic cult, and is preparing for a ceremony that requires the sacrifice of a maiden dressed in white. He was planning to sacrifice his wife and former stepdaughter, Karen, who is also Werdegast's actual daughter. However, since he loves her, he is more than happy to substitute another in her place.
This is a departure from the monster movies that were popular at the time, but it still definitely belongs in the horror category. There are some who claim that this is the only time that Bela Lugosi held his own against Karloff onscreen. I disagree. Not only do I feel that Lugosi practically stole the show from Karloff in Son Of Frankenstein, I credit his performance with the existence of Ghost Of Frankenstein, where he outshone Lon Chaney Jr. Still, The Black Cat is an excellent film that showcases both stars well, features Dracula vs Frankenstein several years early, and foreshadows the kind of work that Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee would do together decades later.

Alright. It's fun to play Monty Python sketches in this very real life. Today I made two big frog eyes out of paper. With some scotch tape I put it in front of my eyes and went upstairs, knocked at the door of my brother's room and when he opened the door I put myself into that zombie pose and screamed 'Whhrraaaa!'. Well, it's not really a Monty Python sketch. Just the idea with those eyes came from the 'Yesterday we learned how to saw a lady in two halfes, today we learn how to saw a lady in three halfs.' sketch. You should have seen my brothers face. It's so damn funny when he's frightened. He has a spider phobia and so the most joyful thing is to run after him with a spider in the hands.

Does anyone know the shortmovie 'Boo'? It rules. I laughed.

Cuando una pel

Honeymooners Peter and Joan Allison (Manners and Wells) are stranded in an isolated house in a Hungarian backwater. Here, they become drawn into the evil Satanist Hjaldmar Poelzig (Karloff) and the revenge-plans of his one-time friend Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi). As the story unfolds, the depth of Poelzig's evil and perversion is revealed in its fullest, and it seems there will be no escape for anyone.

"The Black Cat" is a stylish, incredibly creepy B-movie. It takes place almost entirely within a house built upon the site of a ruined WWI fortress, with the lower levels being the decaying remains of the original structure and the upper floors consisting of a sleek, ultra-modern home. Both sections of the structure lend to the tone of dread that permeates the entire film--with the well-lit, clean rooms of the upper levels of Poelzig's home being even creepier than that the shadow-haunted lower levels thanks to some fine camera work--although the revelation of Poelzig's "exhibit" of beautiful women below has got to be the most terrifying moment of the film. (In fact, I'm hard-pressed to think of a more evil and perverted character present anywhere in these classic horror films than Poelzig: Satanism, treachery, mass-murder, pedophelia... you name it, Poelzig's done it/is into it. (Karloff doesn't have a lot to do acting-wise, other than to just be sinister... but, boy, does he do that in spades here!)


Joan (Jacqueline Wells) is paid a surprise bedside visit by her creepy host Poelzig (Karloff) in "The Black Cat"

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this film is Lugosi. First, those who watch "The Black Cat" will get to see that he was, in fact, a great actor at one time. The pain Dr. Werdegast feels when he is told his wife and daughter died while he languished in a Russian prison is conveyed with incredible strength, as is the mixture of pain and rage when he later learns the truth about their fates, as he and the Allisons manage to seize the initiative from Poelzig and his cultists. Second, it's interesting to see Lugosi playing a hero for once, even if a deeply flawed hero.

On a quirky note, I often complain that horror movies from 30s through the 60s and early 70s often just end: The story resolves and the credits roll without providing the audience with the nicety of a denoument. "The Black Cat" DOES provide what I wish more films would, yet here I almost wish that last minute or so hadn't been included. This is a film that probably should have ended while still in darkness.

While "The Black Cat" has absolutely nothing to do with the Poe tale that "suggested" it--it's got more in common with "The Fall of the House of Usher", I'd say--I think it represents a high point of the horror films that Universal was making in the 30s. I don't see it mentioned often, and I think it's a shame. It's a film that's worth seeing.


The Black Cat (aka "The House of Doom" and "The Vanishing Body")
Starring: Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Boris Karloff, and Jacqueline Wells
Director: Edgar G. Ulmar

The first of eight collaborations between horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, The Black Cat, is also probably one of their most bizarre. Written and directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour) and purportedly based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story of the same name (it's not), The Black Cat, a horror melodrama that combined Satanism, necrophilia, superstition, neuroses, sadomasochism, and human sacrifice with Art Deco sets and a heavy revenge plot into an altogether unique genre entry, became Universal Studios' biggest hit of the year, thus guaranteeing that Karloff and Lugosi would work together again; none, however, as memorable The Black Cat. Alas, Ulmer went on to direct exactly one more memorable film in a long career marked by mediocrity, a particularly nihilistic "Poverty Row" noir entry, Detour.

Usually cast as the villain, antagonist, or monster, Lugosi was given the rare opportunity to play the heroic lead role, but true to typecasting, the character he plays in The Black Cat, Dr. Vitus Werdegast, is more anti-hero than hero. Werdegast is a Hungarian psychiatrist returning home after fifteen years in a prison camp. While he appears rational and controlled, his body language suggests otherwise. Forced to share a train compartment with a young American couple, Peter (David Manners) and Joan Alison (Jacqueline Wells), on honeymoon in Central Europe, Werdegast does little to ingratiate himself with them, but when it turn out that they're traveling in the same direction, they decide to take a bus together. The bus crashes on a dark, winding road, injuring Joan. Werdegast and Peter take her to a modernist house sitting on top of a mountain, a house owned by Werdegast's former friend, Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff), a once-famous Austrian architect.

Dressed in an elegant robe, with his hair trimmed to emphasis the letter "V," Poelzig only has to look out from under his heavily lidded eyes to appear menacing. Still, Poelzig offers his hospitality to Werdegast and the Allisons. It's only the presence of the Allisons, however, that keeps Werdegast and Poelzig from revealing their hatred for each other. Werdegast accuses Poelzig of betraying a fort he commanded to the Russians, leaving hundreds if not thousands of Hungarians to die and Werdegast to suffer for fifteen years in the prison camp. Werdegast also accuses Poelzig of stealing his wife and daughter from him, but his unstable behavior makes him look like he's lost his mind. That theory is borne out by Werdegast's irrational fear of black cats that alternately freezes him and causes him to strike out violently.

Suffice it to say that it doesn't end well for Werdegast or Poelzig, not with all that history behind them and certainly not when Poelzig is revealed as a collector of beautiful objects, including the bodies of women he's perfectly preserved in floating glass coffins or the woman more than half his age he keeps locked up in his bedroom away from the prying eyes of his guests. As the game of wits and will between Werdegast and Poelzig reaches its climax in a Satanic midnight mass, Peter and Joan are forced to choose a side, only one of which will allow them the possibility of escaping Poelzig's prison-house.

Running a little over an hour long, The Black Cat leaves much that it could have shown, such as Werdegast and Poelzig's past together, to often-clunky exposition delivered by one or the other character. We get exactly one exterior shot of Poelzig's house before we relegated to interiors for the remainder of The Black Cat's brief running time. Up top we get modernist, Art Deco sets, down below we get dungeons and secret passageways. We also learn that, as brilliant as Poelzig may have been, he built his new home on unexploded ordnance (dynamite to you and me), complete with a lever to send everything, including himself, sky high. And with not one, but two twisted characters, one consumed by revenge into a sadist and other driven by his monstrous egocentrism, neither is particularly relatable or sympathetic.

That job is left for the bland, underwritten American couple honeymooning in Hungary. He's a pulp fiction writer and she's a woman seemingly content with becoming a wife and mother (and, as the story dictates, a damsel in distress). At most, the Allisons are pawns in Werdegast and Poelzig's deadly game, made all the more obvious by an actual game of chess the characters play for the lives of the Allisons, since Satanic rituals must have their human sacrifices as we learn from one particular character's bedside reading (from the Book of Lucifer, no less). Alas, with so much going on, story wise and subtext wise, and with an obviously limited budget (The Black Cat was made during the Great Depression, after all), it's hard not to feel like we've been shortchanged (because we have) when the promise was there for so much more.

Still, any film that puts two horror icons in a serious horror/drama, leaving aside, of course, the seemingly endless parodies that followed in the early forties, can't be all bad. Luckily, The Black Cat isn't, bad that is. Sure, Ulmer doesn't follow the classical Hollywood style of master shot/shot/reverse shot, instead lingering on medium shots or doing away altogether with close ups (they're few and far between) and sure, the score by Heinz Eric Roemheld seems to have little to do with the action unfolding on screen, but it was innovative for its time (i.e., using music throughout an entire film after the end of the silent era), but with a little patience and a lot of indulgence, The Black Cat will prove rewarding for fans of old school horror done the Universal Studios way.

In the 1930's Universal Studios was known for its lineup of great horror films. Best known, of course, are the Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolf Man series. However, Universal put out a lot of other horror films and one of the most strange and unusual is The Black Cat co-starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. It was their first film together and probably one of their best. Directed by Edgar Ulmer (Detour, The Strange Woman) the film is loaded with erotic overtones, devil worshipping, and mass murder.

Very loosely based on an Edgar Allan Poe short story, the film takes place in Hungary and starts when a young honeymooning couple, Peter and Joan Alison, (Jacqueline Wells and David Manners) meet Doctor Vitus Werdergast (Lugosi) on a train traveling through the countryside. The Doctor, just released from a prisoner of war camp, tells them he is on his way to visit an old friend. After they depart from the train, the three share a cab ride to their next destination. The drive is during a heavy rainstorm and an unfortunate accident kills the driver and injures the wife. Since they are now close to Doctor Werdegast friend's house he invites the couple to come with him so they can take care of the injured wife. The friend, of course, is Haljmar Poelzig (Karloff), a devil worshipping mass murder.



The house Poelzig lives in is a strange reconverted futuristic fortress that we soon will discover is built upon the mass graves of World War 1 soldiers. It soon comes to light that Dr. Werdergast has not come to see a friend but to seek revenge on Poelzig who betrayed him and managed to escape from the enemy during the war leaving Werdergast to be captured and held as a POW. Werdergast is also looking for his wife and daughter who he believes were kidnapped and being held captive by Haljmar. The young couple, Peter and Joan, have become prisoners of Haljmar who intends to sacrifice Joan in one of his satanic rituals while husband Peter is held captive chained in the dungeon below. The film becomes a battleground between Werdergast, trying to save Joan from being sacrificed and also trying to find his wife and daughter, and Haljmar attempting to proceed with his Black Mass rituals and sacrifice Joan.



This is one of the few films where Lugosi is on the side of good. His gives a performance that is actually quite good. Karloff is Karloff and he is actually billed that way in the credits.



Considering this film was made in 1934 it's a pretty dark unsettling movie filled with satanic rituals, female victims displayed suspended from the ceiling upside down and the "skinning" of human beings. While it is not as graphic as today's horror films it is unsettling and must have been even more so to the audience of its day. It is surprising that the studio was able to get away with some of the things included. Granted a lot is insinuated or is off screen or shown in shadows and this may make the film disappointing to some of todays gore oriented audiences.



Ulmer was influenced by the German Expressionist movement. He started out as a set designer and assisted on the set of F.W. Murnau's Sunrise. According to IBDB his set designer credits include Metropolis, The Golem, M as well as The Black Cat. Ulmer and cinematographer John Mescall, who also filmed The Bride of Frankenstein, created a film full of strange eeriness and a deep sense of looming danger.

Available on DVD as part of the Bela Lugosi Collection and VHS.

Rating B+

The Black Cat (1934

I can't help but feel a little disappointed with this movie. I didn't think it lived up to its reputation. Despite that, this is still an entertaining classic horror movie. You can't go wrong with two horror legends in Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff (in there first of eight films together) and they share a lot of screen time together.

A great Horror Movie where the 2 of the Biggest Horror Stars of the 20's and 30's Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff get together for the first Time