The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)

Poverty Row director Edgar G. Ulmer's only major Hollywood studio production (he was blacklisted from the big leagues shortly afterward for having an affair with a woman who was married to the nephew of Universal kingpin Carl Laemmle), The Black Cat is one of the all-time horror classics and one of the strangest films to be a massive box office hit. I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen many years ago during one of the Paramount Theatre's summer classic film series in Austin, TX, and I loved it just as much on the small screen last night.

The film's enduring cult status (it has been embraced by queer audiences in recent years) can be attributed to the high quality of work from its many talented contributors and its knack for functioning as both a darkly humorous piece of camp and a creepy tale of simmering dread. Ulmer received belated recognition as a major filmmaker from critics and scholars beginning in the late '50s, but recognition or not and decent budget or not, he knew how to make a good movie. In The Black Cat, he had the full resources of a Hollywood studio behind him, and rather than getting swallowed up by the machine, he bent it toward his own personal vision.

The film's stars are Boris Karloff (credited only as "Karloff" here, suitable for his character's diva status) and Bela Lugosi at the top of their games playing characters that work both with and against type, in their first pairing. The gorgeous black and white cinematography comes from John J. Mescall, who would go on to shoot The Bride of Frankenstein the following year. Screenwriter Peter Ruric was a pulp novelist who led a wild and tragic pulp-novel-esque personal life of his own. His screenplay has the economy, atmosphere, action, and unpredictable weirdness of the best pulp fiction (the Edgar Allan Poe source material that loosely inspired the film is barely used; Poe is surely the writer to have the most screen adaptations that have the least to do with his work). The incredible Gothic meets Art Deco studio sets and the characters' costumes were designed and overseen by director Ulmer in tribute to German architect Hans Poelzig. Additional tribute was paid by Karloff's character's name, Hjalmar Poelzig.

The film begins with relatively milquetoast newlyweds Peter and Joan Alison (David Manners and Julie Bishop) on a train in Hungary, celebrating their honeymoon. Their private compartment has accidentally been double-booked, and they are joined on the last leg of their trip by Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi), a polite but intense man who says he's on his way to visit an old friend, though the way he says it makes you picture the world's largest air quotes around "friend." Werdegast is a WWI veteran who has recently been released from a prison camp in Siberia, so his intensity is somewhat understandable. 

The Alisons share a coach with Vitus and his deeply weird servant Thamal (Harry Cording) once their train reaches its destination, but when the coach wrecks in heavy rain and Joan suffers a minor injury, Vitus and Thamal take the Alisons to the Gothic/Art Deco mansion of the mysterious "friend" to recuperate. They are met at the door by another deeply weird servant, The Majordomo (Egon Brecher), and eventually meet the weirdest dude in the whole damn movie, famous architect and designer/owner of the weird house, Poelzig (Karloff).

Poelzig, also a WWI vet, was responsible for Vitus's Siberian imprisonment and may be responsible for kidnapping the man's wife and daughter. Vitus has been tracking Poelzig's movements around the world for the last few years and has finally caught up with him for hangouts and revenge. The two men seem to get off on their rivalry and are fascinated and amused by each other with an almost sexual fervor despite their mutual loathing. Add Poelzig's proto-goth/glam androgynous style, his interest in women as aesthetic objects to be preserved and collected rather than pursued romantically, and Vitus's mortal fear of cats ("afraid of pussy"), and the latter two character traits as examples of crypto-misogny signifying closeted homosexuality in early Hollywood films (I stole the last few examples from academic essays I skimmed online), and you can see how the film has been interpreted through a queer lens in recent years.

In the course of an always compelling 65-minute running time, Poelzig attempts to keep the Alisons trapped in his house so he can use Joan in a Satanic ritual and then add her to his collection, Vitus attempts to execute his elaborate revenge plan, Vitus and Poelzig play chess, many nooks and crannies of the amazing house are explored, and much excellent dialogue and many great facial expressions ensue. I particularly enjoy a bit of dialogue (especially Lugosi's delivery) when Poelzig and Vitus attempt to explain to Peter the reasons for Vitus's extreme cat phobia:

Peter: That sounds like superstitious baloney to me.

Vitus (very seriously and intensely): Superstitious? Perhaps. Baloney? Perhaps not. 

Ulmer's films have a real sense of movement, atmosphere, and location and are full of memorable shots. The Black Cat is one of his best.

Despite getting the boot from Hollywood so soon because of his extra-marital shenanigans with the relatives of powerful people, Ulmer kept working, making some of the most exciting low-budget B-movies of the '30s and '40s in a variety of genres, and, immediately following his Hollywood blacklist, a string of independent Yiddish-language musicals, comedies, and melodramas for Jewish immigrant audiences. My Ulmer recommendations besides The Black Cat: Yiddish musical The Singing Blacksmith, noir classic Detour, offbeat period piece melodrama The Strange Woman, rags-to-riches noir/melodrama hybrid Ruthless (Ulmer's Citizen Kane), sci-fi freakout The Man from Planet X, and, if you can deal with the racist but then-prevalent industry practice of casting white people as Mexicans, the melancholy western The Naked Dawn.

Cannibal Hookers (Donald Farmer, 1987)

Last night, I put on some stylish yet casual evening wear, poured a glass of red wine, stoked the fireplace, settled in to my favorite chair, and watched Cannibal Hookers. (Full disclosure: the wine was boxed, I do not have a fireplace, and my evening wear was not stylish.) Cannibal Hookers is either the first or second feature-length cinematic masterpiece (depending on whether the 54-minute Demon Queen counts as a feature) from low-budget L.A. horror auteur Donald Farmer. Farmer is still at it, and his most recent release is a 2019 remake of Cannibal Hookers. He was preparing to shoot Debbie Does Demons when the pandemic hit. 

This was my first exposure to the singular, demented world of Farmer, and I enjoyed the ride, even the parts that made little to no sense (those parts make up most of the running time). Cannibal Hookers is the timeless story of a coven of cannibalistic sex workers who live in a run-down, mostly empty castle-mansion on the outskirts of Hollywood with a dimwitted, cannibalistic brute named Lobo (Gary J. Levinson). Lobo does the heavy lifting and chores and all the crap the hookers don't want to do while they pick up johns and bring them back to the weird mansion and drink their blood and eat their hearts and fingers and various other body parts, with Lobo getting the leftovers.

Meanwhile, a couple of college girls who are ready to party, Hilary (Amy Waddell) and Deedee (Annette Munro), are pledging Los Angeles' most notorious sorority, Zama Gata Bata (yes, that's how they spell it), which, because of the film's budget, appears to have only one existing member, Stephanie (the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling's Sheila Best). For some reason, Hilary and Deedee think joining this sorority with one member is their only chance to party even though they live in Los Angeles. Hilary also has to contend with her anti-sorority mother (Hack-O-Lantern's Katina Garner), who calls the sorority the sleaziest organization in the city and who urges Hilary to hang out with the classy rich people at the country club they are exclusive members of instead. This dialogue is a bit weird, because Hilary and her mother live in a modest, working-class apartment, but I did enjoy Hilary's response to her mother: "I don't want to hang out with assholes, Mom."

For the sorority initiation, Hilary and Deedee have to pretend to be hookers for one night on Sunset Boulevard, pick up one john each, and take the men to an address Stephanie gives them. Unbeknownst to the pledges, the address is the location of the cannibal hookers' weird-ass mansion, which Stephanie sends them to because she thinks it's one of your standard, non-cannibal houses of ill repute. Hilary and Deedee also have to avoid Hilary's boyfriend of one week, Bruce (Tommy Carrano) and his boys Darrell (Donald Trimborn) and Dwight (Matt Borlenghi), or Hilary will have to explain that they can't go out on Saturday night because she has to be a hooker for a day. Bruce and the bros are, due to budgetary reasons, the only members of their frat. Something tells me everyone is going to cross paths before this crazy damn weekend is over.

My description of the plot has done a disservice to the magic and wonder inherent in Donald Farmer's signature writing and directing style. The movie is shot on what looks like an expensive camcorder, the acting is some of the worst you will ever see (though absolutely charming in its terribleness), the narrative follows its own weird rhythm, the whole thing plays like a porn film with the sex scenes removed (and was in fact distributed on video by an adult film company), one of the closing scenes is repeated twice for what appears to be a technical error that was simply left in the finished product, and so many narrative loose ends are left hanging by the comically abrupt ending. We also never quite understand whether the cannibal hookers are Satanists, vampires, zombies, or run-of-the-mill cannibals, or whether the whole thing is caused by a virus. There is a lot of evidence supporting and disproving every scenario.

This movie is an inept blast, a fascinating time capsule of a sliver of 1987 Los Angeles life, and a goldmine of hilarious dialogue. (For example: two detectives are staking out the city's nightlife to try to catch the cannibal killers, and the dumb cop says, after seeing some ladies of the night: "Why are they dressed like that? Must be the new fashions." Exasperated cop says: "They're hookers, you dick!")

As I mentioned earlier, Farmer is still making movies. Born in 1956 in the small city of Pittsburg, Kansas, Farmer has been cranking out the zero-budget horror in Los Angeles since the '80s. Some of his other titles include Scream Dream (the story of a witch who gets fired from the rock band she's in, so she puts a curse on her replacement), Vampire Cop, Space Kid, An Erotic Vampire in Paris, Dorm of the Dead, and Shark Exorcist (the story of a demonic nun who talks the devil into possessing a great white shark). God bless this man.