The Black Cat is a little black bonbon. It's a totally self-contained, neat, tidy little exploration that's about as easy to experience as it is hopefully to talk about. And I think there's a surprising kind of simplicity to the telling of a very strange and very convoluted story. It's a Universal horror film from that great period in the 30s and 40s when Universal effectively controlled the entire genre. And this was Universal's biggest hit of 1934. And I think unlike the films with creatures in the lead, like Frankenstein or Dracula or the Creature from the Black Lagoon or even the earlier Phantom of the Opera. it’s often the case that I think their more unusual fare is their most engaging, like The Old Dark House. And I think much like The Old Dark House, I experienced The Black Cat for the first time as an adult.

I think we can all agree that The Black Cat has a lot in common with The Old Dark House, with the exception of its tone, because The Old Dark House is really blackly comedic and very witty, but The Black Cat is much more serious, with the exception of a couple of moments that really undercut the horror. And both films, of course, feature a group of travelers stranded or injured who find shelter in a spooky home owned by strange characters. And of course, this is the union of two horror icons for the first time, which I think makes it required watching.

In the film, one of them is this Austrian architect, the other is a Hungarian psychiatrist. And we've got an American mystery novelist, his wife, we've got these two super strange, very stylized and exotic servants. And while we may recognize Peter Allison, who is played by David Manners, it's these two sort of titans clashing that we're here to watch square off in the ring.

I think the film represents a collision of all kinds of ideas. The movie came out between the wars, a really interesting point in American history. And the film is representing a collision of science and pseudoscience and medicine and the supernatural.

There's a point at which Werdegast suggests that the narcotic that he's given to Joan has made her “mediumistic,” which is a strange thing to hear come out of the mouth of a doctor. I think Poelzig straddles a similar line. He's an internationally famous architect who's also a “great dark priest,” and has literally built his home as a temple to Satan. He, of course, is based on figures like Aleister Crowley, who was also getting a lot of media attention at the time, though [director Edgar G.] Ulmer also suggests that Poelzig is based on the director Fritz Lang, with whom Ulmer worked as a scenic designer and said he was a complete sadist.

I think also there's something really interesting and exciting about this kind of icy silver Satanism that we get in The Black Cat. It's very neat, very clean, and a huge departure from how the idea of Satanism or witchcraft or rituals or ceremonies would be presented later in the 70s and the 80s. And even now, when Satanism is usually represented with a kind of retro throwback ‘80s sensibility that comes from or is informed by a kind of heavy metal aesthetic sensibility. This space that Poelzig has made is this sort of half luxury transatlantic ocean liner and half New York City penthouse built literally on top of a World War I military fort, where tens of thousands of men were killed in an epic battle.

This movie is just really weird. It's got murder and torture and something akin to incest, and it's also got knockout interior design.

To hear our discussion of The Black Cat, click here.

Bradford Louryk