LAST BLAST OF HALLOWEEN: The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)

On Halloween night, I caught a double-bill of films pairing horror icons Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

The first film was The Black Cat, from 1934. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, who is most famous for the low-budget noir Detour (1945), the film was Universal's biggest hit of the year.

A doctor returns to the battlefield where he lost his freedom. He intends to confront the man who betrayed him, and save his wife and daughter.

His task becomes more complicated once he arrives at his opponents' home, accompanied by an innocent American couple...

A perverse revenge tale, The Black Cat is a strange beast (no pun intended): a contemporary gothic, haunted by the horrors of World War One.

Lugosi’s Dr Werdegast has returned to the site of his betrayal - the battlefield where his unit was betrayed and died at the hands of Karloff’s Poelzig. Karloff has built an Art Deco estate atop the old fortifications, where he has continued his descent into evil.

This includes killing and preserving the body of his wife (who was previously married to Lugosi), and then marrying her daughter - who he keeps in a deathlike trance.

With its themes of necrophilia and psychological trauma, The Black Cat is a fascinating meeting point between past and future modes of horror. Poelzig's home is the perfect metaphor for the film's unique position, with  stylised futuristic interiors above ground, over crumbling catacombs that look like missing sets from Lugosi's Dracula.

Speaking of the stars, The Black Cat makes for a great vehicle for their contest, evoking their past works while offering both performers a unique story that feels of a piece with itself. 

Lugosi’s range is monochromatic, but he is pretty effective as Werdegast - his charm comes across as too stagey, working well for the character's mental state. Werdegast has spent 15 years in prison, and Lugosi's overly-measured line readings come across as a character forcing himself to play host while he waits to enact his revenge. Once the character learns of the depth of Poelzig's depravity, Lugosi is on surer footing as Werdegast - stripped of everything that mattered to him - gloats over the tortures he intends to use on 

Poelzig. There is a strange meta-textual thrill to the finale as Lugosi breaks into the gleeful malignant smile that his Dracula so iconic. 

However of the two horror icons, it is Karloff who comes off best. His skeletal face and rigid bearing almost feel like part of the mise-en-scene, evoking how Poelzig's sterile home replicate the character's personality. With his voice, all purring malice, Karloff makes Poelzig a formidable, implacable antagonist who is complete control of his environment and his guests. 

Running a tight 69 minutes, The Black Cat moves at a deceptively languid pace as our protagonists slowly discover exactly what Poelzig intends for them. 

As the ignorant Americans who stumble into Poelzig's home after an accident, David Manners and Julie Bishop are fine but functionally they are solely present to provide an ordinary perspective to the proceedings. It is important to have them there, but the roles do not give the actors much to do.

A uniquely creepy showcase for its stars, The Black Cat is a terrific thriller that stands on its own in the Hollywood horrors of the Thirties.  

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