Movie 1: The Black Cat (1934)
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL
Plot:
Four travelers, stranded by a storm, are stuck in a house where evil is the norm. Hilarity ensues.
Reaction:
This was bait and switch, pure and simple. The movie was marketed as Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat, and the opening credits indicate that it was "suggested by" the Poe classic. Bullshit. Except for the fact that is has a black cat and some people in it, this movie really borrows nothing from Poe. They could have written the cat out of the script alltogether, and there would have been no material difference. I guess they would have had to come up with a different name. Something like War's Final Victim. Hey, that sounds pretty artsy, if I do say so myself.
Now, don't get me wrong; having spent this many years watching movies in Keith's basement, I've learned not to expect Poe adaptations to adhere perfectly to their Poespiration. But all the others we've seen incorporate at least an element of the original.
Having said that, I suppose it would be unfair to judge this movie by what it's not. So now I'll focus on what it is.
I'm of a bit of a mixed mind on this. In some ways this was your standard story of people trying to survive after being stranded in a monster's castle. The castle itself has a classic spooky castle layout, but the construction is all art deco, which kind of makes it disconcerting. And it was an interesting story, but very slow-moving at times.
I enjoyed recognizing more-recent things in it, and realizing how much it influenced future productions. In many ways it felt like either a really bad episode of Star Trek (note how Karloff looked like Ruk from "What are Little Girls Made of") or a really good episode of Space 1999. Yeah, that latter one for sure. The soulless way Karloff's character navigated his way through his role reminded me of S-1999 season 1.
In addition to the regular stuff, I found a couple of interesting aspects of this movie to appreciate-- places where it filled in some of my cultural knowledge.
The first is Boris Karloff's voice. Until seeing this, I wasn't aware of what Karloff sounded like when he spoke. Now, all those pop culture high-pitched lispy monsters from pop culture make sense to me. I thought of them as kind of generic monsters, without ever stopping to question why that voice is the iconic monster voice. Now I realize that they were all Karloff impressions. Bobby Pickett's "Monster Mash." Frankenberry. Innumerable monster anthology narrators -- all of them were Karloff impressions.
My other "duh" moment was a bit of dialogue. At one point, Peter (played by David Manners) says "Sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney to me." To this, Vitus (Bela Lugosi) responds, "Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not." The clip of this exchange is incorporated into The Monkees' movie Head (which I plan to bring to class next year for Bring Your Own Movie Month). I had always known that this clip was from some old movie, but I didn't know what movie Now I do. Yay!
Ratings:
Me: 8.5
Dave: 9.95
Ethan: 9
Rich: 7 to 8
Sean 3 out of 4
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