An American and his new wife are trapped by a storm somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, as is a strange doctor, Bela Lugosi. They seek refuge in the nearby art deco mansion of Boris Karloff.
If Lugosi seems strange -- and did he ever NOT seem strange? -- this big house and everyone in it, including Karloff, his young wife, and the servants -- seem equally off kilter.
Instance: When the stranded guests arrive, the Master is summoned. He's in bed in a dark room and switches on the light next to the bed. Instead of the scene then being properly lighted, a light goes on OUTSIDE THE WINDOW and we see Karloff sitting up in silhouette. And he doesn't just sit up, the way you and and I do, struggling with the blankets for a second, then swinging our legs over the side of the bed. No. His body bends at a stiff angle, like a marionette, and his upper torso rises to the vertical. The whole is unnerving.
The plot is twisted in various ways, none of them supernatural. Karloff sold out his soldiers to the Russians in World War I and Lugosi wound up spending 15 years in prison. On top of that, Karloff married the wife Lugosi left behind and, when she died two years later, married his daughter. Lugosi only finds this out in increments and finally, with a bullet in him, he's able to shackle Karloff to a cross or something and begin skinning him alive with a handy scalpel before blowing the entire house and all its strange inhabitants to bits -- except for the American and his wife, who manage to escape.
The story is full of tension, which should account partly for its appeal across so many generations. And there are directorial touches that momentarily jar. (The American hangs his jacket up -- over the camera lens -- and there is a dissolve to another dark room.) The musical score is lifted almost entirely from Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Bach, presumably because it was cheap. I mean, the tunes are in public domain and the arrangements already written. Two of the pieces are for the organ.
At heart, though, it's an inexpensive horror movie in the same genre as Universal's other horror movies -- "Frankenstein," et al. But the plot is pedestrian, there is no particular poetry in the dialog, and the acting is routine. The director was Edgar G. Ulmer, he of the distinctive "Detour." If his reputation had to depend on "The Black Cat" alone, I doubt his name would carry such cachet.
If Lugosi seems strange -- and did he ever NOT seem strange? -- this big house and everyone in it, including Karloff, his young wife, and the servants -- seem equally off kilter.
Instance: When the stranded guests arrive, the Master is summoned. He's in bed in a dark room and switches on the light next to the bed. Instead of the scene then being properly lighted, a light goes on OUTSIDE THE WINDOW and we see Karloff sitting up in silhouette. And he doesn't just sit up, the way you and and I do, struggling with the blankets for a second, then swinging our legs over the side of the bed. No. His body bends at a stiff angle, like a marionette, and his upper torso rises to the vertical. The whole is unnerving.
The plot is twisted in various ways, none of them supernatural. Karloff sold out his soldiers to the Russians in World War I and Lugosi wound up spending 15 years in prison. On top of that, Karloff married the wife Lugosi left behind and, when she died two years later, married his daughter. Lugosi only finds this out in increments and finally, with a bullet in him, he's able to shackle Karloff to a cross or something and begin skinning him alive with a handy scalpel before blowing the entire house and all its strange inhabitants to bits -- except for the American and his wife, who manage to escape.
The story is full of tension, which should account partly for its appeal across so many generations. And there are directorial touches that momentarily jar. (The American hangs his jacket up -- over the camera lens -- and there is a dissolve to another dark room.) The musical score is lifted almost entirely from Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Bach, presumably because it was cheap. I mean, the tunes are in public domain and the arrangements already written. Two of the pieces are for the organ.
At heart, though, it's an inexpensive horror movie in the same genre as Universal's other horror movies -- "Frankenstein," et al. But the plot is pedestrian, there is no particular poetry in the dialog, and the acting is routine. The director was Edgar G. Ulmer, he of the distinctive "Detour." If his reputation had to depend on "The Black Cat" alone, I doubt his name would carry such cachet.