For tonight’s horror I’m going back to the golden age of Universal’s dominance of the Horror genre and visiting the very first collaboration between the two biggest legends of that era – Bella Lugosi and Boris Karloff. This is “The Black Cat” from 1934. Universal’s highest selling movie of that year, a movie that lay the foundation for the Psychological Horror sub-genre, a pre-code movie (meaning it could be edgier than those that would follow for the next few decades) and last but not least was one of the earliest movies to feature a continuous musical score (present for about 80% of the movie). Question is though does this 88 year old movie still stand up?
October Review Challenge – Day 22
Our story starts with Newlyweds Peter and Joan Allison (David Manners and Julie Bishop respectively) on their honeymoon in Hungary where they meet Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi), a Hungarian psychiatrist that is returning after being in a prison camp in Serbia for 15 years after WW1. After the bus they are on crashes, Peter and Dr. Werdegast take her to the home of Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff) an Austrain architect. The home is built on the ruins of an old fort, which Poelzig used to be the commander of. Werdegast explains Poelzig is an old friend, though in truth they are bitter rivals with Werdegast believing Poelzig betrayed him and his men to the Russians during the war resulting in the death of thousands.
Once inside things start out friendly enough but soon become sinister. Werdegast believes Poelzig stole his wife from him, and later after he is shown her preserved body that he has killed her. This may be true as it seems Poelzig has a collection of dead women on display in glass cases. Also in the mansion, but unknown the guests is also Werdegast’s daughter. Poelzig has married her and told her that her father died in the war.
Eventually it becomes clear that Poelzig wants to sacrifice Joan in a Satanic ritual, but Werdegast is determined to stop him and take down his rival once and for good. Initially he plays Chess for the freedom of the newlyweds, but loses to Poelzig who then prevents the newlyweds from leaving, imprisons Peter and prepares Joan for her sacrifice. It is a conflict that would see few survivors of that fateful night. But you’ll have to watch this classic to learn any more.
Bitter Rivals
Karloff and Lugosi are better actors than they are usually given credit for and they both put in a good performance here. Interestingly playing bitter rivals on screen may have been the start of their real life rivalry. Despite working together eight times, Karloff usually got top billing and that never sat well with Lugosi. It’s possible their rivalry started during filming this movie, after all the top two horror stars of the day playing bitter rivals on screen, hard not to imagine them wanting to outperform each other and of course since they are playing bitter rivals that comes through on screen and makes for a definite highlight for the film.
The rest of the cast is just sort of there but when you’re on screen with two icons it’s hard not to get lost in the shuffle. None of them were bad though. Being a 30’s movie there is little in the way of effects and the horror is all implied, though those implications can at times be pretty grewsome, including someone being skinned alive (Just not on camera, though you see some shadows). As a psychological horror it doesn’t have to rely on monsters or direct conflict, a lot of it is about the build and it handles this pretty pretty well.
Sound and Fury
In regards to the musical score, this is something that while fairly ground breaking, hasn’t actually aged that well. The movie features a mixture of compositions by Liszt, Tchaikovsky and Chopin instead of original material and as a result lacks the same sort of impact as scores would later give to horror movies and also makes the soundtrack somewhat interchangeable with a lot of other films of the 1930’s. Of course as you’d expect from those three composers the music itself is of a very high standard but it tends to be a bit too overbearing and draws too much attention to itself.
That said it’s hard to judge how this was received at the time. Audiences used to silent movies were used to hearing continuous music, but earlier horrors of the 30’s such as Dracula and Frankenstein would have felt strangely silent, with an opening and closing theme but little else in between. Of course the same year as The Black Cat came out King Kong changed the game for film scores forever by featuring an entirely original score, so this was a product of a short transitional period for movie soundtracks.
The Black Cat
The title “The Black Cat” only really factors into the story a couple of times. It seems Werdegast has an extreme fear of black cats. So naturally his rival keeps a few of them around. The Black Cat is also pointed out to be symbolic of evil in the film and of course Poelzig is Satanist. But really the title of the film was just an excuse to link the story to Edgar Allan Poe’s story by the same name, to which it bares no resemblance at all.
One of the most interesting things I find with this film is that were it to be made in the 2020’s it would probably be 3 hours long, yet they told this story in one hour and five minutes. It’s not like the plot is overly simple either. True some characters could have been given more time, but the story is all there and the truth is the audience even in the day probably only cared about Karloff and Lugosi anyway. So if the daughter seems somewhat wasted and the husband and wife couple of little consequence, it’s not the biggest blow to the movie.
Conclusion
Anyway, all told there is a reason this is a classic. Rating it from the point of view of how it stands today however instead of how it must have felt when it came out I give this a strong 6.5/10 (Meaning I’ll likely make that 7/10 for my IMDB rating since I can’t do half points there). If I was reviewing this in 1934 though it would probably get an 8/10. So, it’s lost some points after 88 years but a 6.5/10 is still a strong score from me. Once again I am reminded why Universal’s Horror movies of this era are so well regarded.
You must be logged in to post a comment.