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.