Monthly Archives: October 2023

31Oct / 2023

Vampyr (1932, dir. Carl Th. Dreyer)

⭐️⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 38

This film is a bit bewildering to me, I must confess. Taken as a filmic version of a horror-based dream (its clear intention), a reflection on some of the many tropes surrounding our own fear of our mortality and the ways we might depart this life, Vampyr should be considered a powerful success. If one is watching the film hoping for a coherent plot or definitive statement of meaning, you’re completely out of luck.

Given the utter brilliance of Dreyer’s previous film, 1928’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, his first sound movie — a horror movie about vampires — should have been a massive success.

Instead, it was a huge flop with audiences at first, and even after re-editing only garnered mixed reviews. This appears to be down to two main factors: his comfort in shooting movies in the silent style, along with unexpected struggles with adding sound (beyond music) to his film was the first problem.

The second “flaw” of a sort was his decision to make a dreamy, soft-focus, motivation-less tale dependent on atmosphere and imagery rather than story. Vampyr is 90 percent a silent movie, shot in that style, complete with title cards to explain things some (not enough) things from time to time.

One of many haunting images in Vampyr.

The acting, likewise, is very silent-movie style, with few characters having much of anything to say on the rare occasions that they do speak. That said, there is some spoken dialogue and sound effects, which kind of gain a Bergman-like weight by their rarity.

The plot, such as it is: a man named Allan Gray, who is introduced as a dreamer who is obsessed with the occult to the point where he lives in a sort of dream state comes to a town, takes a room at the inn, where a man breaks in and leaves him a book “in the event of my death.” Shadows and instinct guide him to the manor of the man, who is murdered by a shadow with a rifle (?) shortly after Gray’s arrival.

He rushes to help, but it is too late. He meets the man’s youngest daughter, Gisèle, who says that her older sister, Léone, is gravely ill. Just then, they see Léone walking outside.

As they rush out to collect her, she is found with fresh bite marks and a briefly-glimpsed older person who quickly disappears. They carry Léone inside, Gray remembers the book, and starts to read it (there’s a lot of reading this book in the film).

Turns out it’s a book about vampyrs and their powers, which leads Gray to conclude (duh) that Léone is the victim of a vampire. A very odd and suspicious local doctor shows up, looking for all the world like Mark Twain.

The doctor says Léone can only be saved by donated blood, and arranges for Gray to provide some. Tired afterwards, he falls asleep.

You’re never quite sure who’s side Mark Twain is on in this movie.

One of the servants of the house reads Gray’s book, figures out what is going on, and knows who the Vampyr must be. Gray wakes up, senses danger, and saves Léone from being poisoned by the doctor, who may or may not have been trying to prevent her becoming a Vampyr.

Gray tries to catch the fleeing doctor, who may be a servant of the Vampyr, but stops to rest and has an out-of-body experience where he has died and is about to be buried by Marguerite Chopin (the Vampyr he saw earlier) and the doctor, confirming their alliance (maybe). As he returns to his body, he sees the old servant heading to the graveyard, and accompanies him.

The incredible out-of-body effect is stunningly good and far ahead of its time.

They open the grave of Marguerite Chopin, finding her perfectly preserved. They drive an iron bar through her heart, and she dies a true death, instantly becoming a skeleton.

Léone is released from the curse, the doctor suddenly sees the face of the late lord of the manor, chasing him away from the house and killing the soldier who was helping him (?). Gray rescues the tied up Gisèle (?), while the doctor hides in the old mill, somehow becoming trapped in a grain bin.

Léone under the control of the Vampyr

The old servant shows up and turns on the mill, eventually burying the doctor in grain. Gisèle, who is apparently now in love with the nearly-silent Gray, leaves with him on a boat across the river and they find a bright clearing. The end.

For a sound movie, very little is said, and the interstitial titles give us a little background but avoid explaining much of anything as the story progresses. As mentioned, Dreyer opted to film this like a dream — complete with putting gauze near the lens of the camera for all the outdoor shots.

Gisèle under threat

It’s very clear that he intended this to be a silent film, and was coerced to adding sound and really struggled with that. Thankfully, his next film, Day of Wrath (1943), received better reviews and largely found him back on course.

If you want a film that will weird you out, this might be a good candidate. Lots of gorgeous shots and symbolism give it a very disconnected dream-like effect, and I’m of little doubt that this film had a profound effect on David Lynch.

The shadows in this movie are another force of evil

That said, the overall impression is that it’s half a movie: the visuals are there, but the storytelling is severely lacking. Even worse, the “hero” (or maybe more accurately, the “subject”) of the film, Allan Gray, is a nondescript nobody who spends the entire first half silently reacting to things, and leaving little impression on anyone but Gisèle, inexplicably.

He’s not even the hero; the old servant, who we don’t even meet until halfway through the film, is the one who actually resolves things — almost as though he was waiting for Allan to do it, gave up, and decided to end the movie as quickly as possible.

I’ve given it three stars because the visuals are ahead of their time, artistically interesting, and communicate the dream-like intention extremely well. Once people stop reading books and actually start doing things, the film really picks up — but even though the film is just 73 minutes long, the first half is an awful slog of odd things happening for no reason and an ineffective subject.

To put this another way: you’d never guess this was directed by the genius that gave us The Passion and the smaller masterpiece Gertrud, his final film. Vampyr feels more like an ambitious art-college experimental film.

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26Oct / 2023

Night of the Living Dead (1968, dir. George A. Romero)

52-week film challenge, film 37
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½

It has been a long time since I last saw this film, but even the first time I saw it I was very impressed with it, and I’m happy to report that the passing decades haven’t diluted my view of it at all. At its core, it is a very cheap but effective horror movie, but with levels and subtlety that raise it far above the rank of “cheap horror movies” into both a social statement of a very divided America at the time (and, sadly, still), and a psychological study of how people react under stress because of circumstances they cannot control.

The new restoration of the movie has given me a chance to view it in the best possible light, and it reminds me again of the conviction and authenticity of the players as well as the extras who play the zombies; this is a very well-directed film from Mr. Romero that has (by necessity) a play-like quality to it. In the wrong hands it could have been stagey and talky, but Romero’s cinematography uses the language of film to give it a tight, nimble sense of movement.

The plot is revealed in a nearly-perfect manner; a couple are attacked by a shambolic man, the woman escapes in a panic and makes her way to a nearby house, where she is nearly a zombie herself as she processes a mind-breaking trauma. She is further traumatized when she discovers the corpse of the long-dead woman who owned the house upstairs. A black man named Ben (Duane Jones) also arrives at the house, who also isn’t sure what’s happening — but has retained his wits and sets about barricading the house, understanding that the outsiders aren’t acting like humans anymore.

They are surprised to discover a small family and a young couple have been hiding in the cellar, also shell-shocked from being attacked by what turns out to be the recently-dead, turned into “ghouls” by some kind of radiation from an exploded space probe. This information is parsed out slowly across the film; at first, nobody really understands what is happening, and the sense of helplessness and confusion is increasingly relatable today, as some formerly-coherent societies break down and decay in seemingly random, disturbing ways.

As a reflection on Romero’s view of American culture at the time, the film both parses out more backstory and information as we go along, but also the ad-hoc structure of the band of survivors begins to break down, collapsing just as help finally arrives. I don’t want to say too much about the ending because it is still so powerful and upsetting, but I will say the climax of the film has lost none of its punch over the last 55 years, and that America doesn’t seem to have learned much since then.

The influence Night of the Living Dead has had on low-budget filmmaking and the horror genre specifically is also hard to summarize, except to say that this film defined what would later be commonly called “zombie movies” and changed the direction of film horror entirely to lean more into capitalizing on troubling elements in the real world.

Romero went on to direct five sequels to the film, though the most memorable one to me remains the original sequel, Dawn of the Dead. I also found his vampire movie, Martin (1977), way more thought-provoking than I expected.

Years later, when I was in college, I met and interviewed Romeo for the college newspaper. He had been invited by the film and drama instructor there to shoot a short film on location, as luck would have it — the first film he shot outside of Pittsburgh. Ironically, I never saw the resulting film, Jacaranda Joe, and I should really track that down.

We had a lively and memorable discussion about his career, waaaay more than I could have ever published in the newspaper, including a frank discussion about the social implications of many of his films. He was very generous with his time, and seemed happy to discuss his films with someone who had actually seen most of them to that point, including Season of the Witch and The Crazies.

Watching the film again after so long, I remain so impressed with the quality of his main cast, especially Jones and the real-life family that played the cellar-dwelling Coopers. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor couldn’t portray a marriage on the rocks any better than Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman, and as for Karl’s daughter Kyra — she has a very minor role in the film until she doesn’t, and then … woah.

The “ghouls” also do a great job, really getting that shambolic, mindless walk and creepy milling about thing just right, only lightly augmented with makeup. Ironically, the “help” in the form of police and posses who figure out how to “kill” the zombies for good are the weakest acting link, though the TV presenter who delivers lots of backstory was very natural (as he should be — he was a real-life TV horror-movie show host!).

Many films from the late 1960s are very tied to the culture/style/fashion/issues of the time, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but somehow Night of the Living Dead is far more timeless, especially when it comes to the story. It holds up extraordinarily well and is well worth watching and thinking about, as one of the few horror movies with such a strong social message.

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21Oct / 2023

Doctor X (1932, dir. Michael Curtiz)

⭐️⭐️
52-week film challenge, film 36

Normally when someone says “wanna watch a pre-Code horror movie from the early 1930s during October?” I’d be all-in. I’m disappointed to report that I’ve finally found one that, despite a few good things going for it, completely wastes its potential.

The good things first: Doctor X has a mostly-stellar cast, including Lionel Atwill, Lee Tracy, and Fay Wray. It’s in a sort of colour (more on this in a moment), which was rare for 1932. The sets are wonderful, complete with an eccentric mad-scientist lab — that oddly doesn’t belong to the mad scientist — and some downright neo-German Expressionism moments.

At the core of this movie is a plot that involves ritual murder and partial cannibalism — so yes, it’s a pre-Code horror movie all right. Despite this, almost none of what is lurid about this tale is actually shown, there’s an endless amount of talking about doing things before actually doing them, and the “comedic” element meant to lighten the tone is just irritatingly jarring, and completely amusement-free.

Intrepid reporter Taylor, caught burgling, tries turning on his nonexistant charm.

This film gets one star just for its cast, though many of the players seem off their A-game at times, occasionally having to correct their own lines as though the cost of the color filming was too expensive for second takes. It only gets a second star because the film is simply gorgeous to look at, with great sets, Max Factor makeup (!!), and the novelty of colour.

Well, as I say, sort-of colour — not quite full colour, but rather the third “process” used for two-colour Technicolor (often and incorrectly referred to as “two-strip” Technicolor). This is the same process used for the later, and more famous (but also not great) Michael Curtiz horror film, Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933).

Without getting too technical about it, anything red or green really stood out, and the filmmakers played that up here, but oddly not with blood as much as one might expect. The plot of the film belies its origins as a stage play: a handful of key sets, lots of talking, very little action.

I’m still left wondering why the movie is even called Doctor X — since the lead character, Doctor Xavier (Atwill), is not the title character, the mad killer (and that’s not really a spoiler). I suppose its because it is meant to keep you guessing who the villain is, but I picked him out around the halfway mark, and only stuck around to get the inevitable explanation of how he kept his true identity secret.

In the film itself, the series of murders that only happen under a full moon and involved a partial cannibalisation of the body means the police (and the press) refer to the murderer as the Moon Killer, which really would have been a better title. As the film opens, we find a curiously aggressive but determined reporter, Lee Taylor (Tracy), trying to find new leads on the story of the killer by quizzing police.

When that doesn’t work, he gets wind of a new victim being delivered to the morgue, and sneaks in and hides as another body in order to overhear what the coroner, police, and Dr. Xavier (called in to consult on the body) have to say. The police put the screws to Xavier quickly, pointing out that all the victims have been killed and mutilated using a special kind of scalpel found only at Xavier’s medical academy.

Xavier, fearing bad publicity that could ruin the school, persuades the police to let him conduct his own secret investigation first for the next 48 hours before telling anyone — especially the press — about this direct connection to the killer. They very reluctantly agree, and Taylor has gotten his scoop, but he also withholds some of it from his editor to see where this is all going to go.

Dr. Xavier, knowing that the scalpel connections means that the killer is one of his own colleagues, tells the other doctor/instructors of the academy of this, and arranges an experiment to determine who the killer might be — not even ruling himself out. The only doctor of the group who is pre-cleared is Dr. Wells, because he only has one hand and the killer clearly has two, and thus Wells stands in for Xavier in actually running the experiments.

Meanwhile, in the process of breaking and entering into the academy and also trying to steal a few photographs for the newspaper to use, Taylor is caught by Xavier’s daughter Joanne, thus setting up a later romantic angle — after all, how could she resist a jerk and petty criminal she caught ransacking her home in the name of a scoop?

Down in the basement, Xavier starts his investigation by having all the doctors but Wells sit in special chairs (including himself), where fantastic electrical equipment will record each man’s heart rate while they witness a staged re-creation of the last murder, using Xavier’s butler and maid to play those parts. At the height of the very Frankenstein-like electrical show, just as the readings are to reveal the killer, a blackout occurs.

Literally the killer accidentally reveals himself in this scenem, but everyone is too dumb to notice.

When the lights come back on, the doctor whose pulse was the highest, Dr. Rowitz, is found murdered by a scalpel to the brain. Later his body is discovered to have been partially cannibalised — so the killer is obviously in the room! Dun dun DUNNNNN!

While a second experiment is arranged where the suspects will all be locked down this time (except, again, Wells), we spend way too much time following up on the efforts of Taylor to romance Joanne — which slowly begins to win her over. Because that’s how you handle obnoxious jerks who might ruin your father’s academy in the 1930s apparently. Men really could behave badly back then, and still be seen as “the hero.”

What she sees in unfunny jerk Taylor, other than he’s the first man she’s not already met in this movie, I’ll never know.

We do also see that the maid and butler are getting kind of creeped out by the events, and that the police are putting even more pressure on Xavier to find the killer. We also get lots of “funny” shots of the actual killer lurking around the house, almost but never quite getting his hands on Taylor, which is a damn shame.

After the maid refuses to participate as the victim in the second staged murder recreation, she is actually killed by the killer. Under this cloud of tragedy, Joanne steps up to play the victim role, which puts Xavier on edge, but he has no options left.

With everyone strapped in, the recreation begins again, and without spoiling things we’ll just say that the killer reveals himself by entering a secret laboratory, where his disguise method is seen by us, and then he tries to kill Joanne. Finally, Taylor has a genuine heroic moment and stops the killer, since the other doctors are restrained, and the killer meets his gruesome comeuppance.

Doctor X is woefully short on any real tension (because those moments keep getting defused by Taylor’s pratfalls and dumb luck), and as a whodunnit it probably came off as fresher in 1932 than it does now. The film is only an hour and 16 minutes long, but seems to drag in places — especially the “comedy” moments.

To borrow and paraphrase a quip from another reviewer: if you love film history, the significance of Doctor X means you sorta have to see it. If you love movies for how they make you feel, you should skip this one.

“What’s that, Taylor? You’ve committed numerous misdemeanors to get the story, and you might get a date out of it? Okay, I’ll hold the presses for ya!”

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14Oct / 2023

Phantom of the Paradise (1974, dir. Brian de Palma)

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

52-week film challenge, film 35

This review is dedicated to Don Smith, a recently-deceased podcaster on one of my favourite podcasts (Watchers of the Fourth Dimension), who loved this movie.

The early 70s covered a lot of cultural ground, but one of the weirder cul-de-sacs was the emergence of the Rock Opera, in which pop composers attempted to Do Something Meaningful by combining multiple rock songs into a (sometimes semi-) cohenent plot line. The form began in either 1968 (with S.F. Sorrow by The Pretty Things) or 1969 (The Who’s Tommy), depending on who you ask.

It hit big first with Jesus Christ Superstar in ‘70, Bowie’s album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars in 72, and the original stage production of The Rocky Horror Show in ’73. Movies of some of these efforts followed on, peaking in the mid–70s: Jesus Christ Superstar in late ‘73, Phantom of the Paradise in ‘74, and arguably the most successful examples, The Rocky Horror Picture Show in ‘74 and The Who’s Tommy in ‘75.

Of these films, all but one was a well-polished and long-running stage musical, and it was Phantom of the Paradise. In my view, it is less successful as a rock opera because of this — but on the other hand it borrows liberally from two great sources: the 1909 novel and 1925 classic film The Phantom of the Opera and Lon Chaney’s memorable performance, and of course Faust.

Brian De Palma’s second commercial film, seen now, will remind people of Rocky Horror in some ways — over-the-top camp, rollickin’ rock music, and the eccentric camerawork. It’s an amusing movie, particularly as a parody of Faust (and for pre-Muppets Paul Williams) but the humour is probably boosted if you are already enjoying some recreational substances, as people surely did at the time this came out. There’s no doubt in my mind that De Palma saw Rocky Horror on stage, and spotted the future filmic potential, though I’d love to verify that.

Winslow, soon to become the Phantom, and Phoenix.

The plot, basically: a singer-songwriter named Winslow Leach (William Finley) creates a cantata based on Faust, and this gets heard by a rich record producer named Swan (Paul Williams). Swan thinks the cantata will be perfect for the opening of his new concert hall, and has his henchman Arnold Philbin (George Memmoli) steal it.

Leach, expecting to hear back from Swan, makes repeated attempts to get back in touch but keeps getting thrown out. On one of these visits, he hears Phoenix (Jessica Harper) singing a portion of his work and falls in love.

This time, Leach is framed for drug possession, is sent to prison for life, and has his teeth forcibly replaced with a steel set. A few months later, he hears that Swan’s band The Juicy Fruits have covered part of his music, goes berserk and escapes prison, breaks into Swan’s record-pressing plant as is severely disfigured when he falls into one of the record-pressing machines.

Yes, various tricks are used to keep Paul Williams’ actual (lack of) height obscured.

Seeking revenge, he breaks into the Paradise club itself, hiding in the costume department and finding a stylish silver owl mask and cape to complete his transformation into the Phantom (these bird metaphors are already laid on kind of thick). He hears the Beach Bums (formerly the Juicy Fruits) rehearsing a reworked version of his music and nearly kills them all, which attracts Swan’s attention.

Swan tracks Leach down and proposes a deal: finish the cantata and record it in a custom built recording studio. Swan gives Leach a voice box to (kind of) replace his destroyed vocal cords, promises that Phoenix will be the lead, and makes him sign a contract in blood.

The Phantom and Swan are the original frenemies.

Leach completes the cantata at the point of exhaustion, allowing Swan to steal it and replace Phoenix as the lead with (I’m not kidding) a glam rock prima donna named Beef (Gerrit Graham). Swan orders the studio sealed up with bricks.

Leach recovers, and in a fit of adrenaline smashes his way out of the bricked-up exit, makes his way to the Paradise, and confronts Beef in his shower, threatening him not to perform the lead.

If this image looks a bit familiar, you might be a film buff.

Beef agrees, but is forced by Swan and Philbin to return and perform for the rehearsal. Leach’s Phantom is in the rafters, and when he see this repeated betrayal he sends a neon lightning bolt down, which fries Beef.

Beef.

Philbin, understanding that the Phantom is behind this, promotes Phoenix to do the next song, and — surprise! — everyone loves her, including Swan. Swan promptly begins seducing Phoenix, and the Phantom tries briefly to warn her, but she is panicked and doesn’t recognize Leach.

Later, the Phantom spies on Swan and Phoenix as they prepare to make love. He tries to kill himself out of despondence, but Swan appears on the roof to tell Leach he cannot die until Swan dies because of their contract. So Leach attempts to kill Swan, but Swan points out that “I’m under contract too,” explicitly revealing he made a pact with the devil 20 years earlier to stay eternally young.

Swan announces to the press that he and Phoenix will marry during the finale of his production of Faust. Leach realizes that Swan plans to have Phoenix assassinated as the wedding concludes, as she has also signed a blood contract with him. He goes to Swan’s vault, destroying the tapes and Swan’s filmed and blood-signed contracts, then hastens to prevent the assassination during the wedding.

Because of this, Swan is starting to deteriorate, and dons a mask for the wedding. The Phantom, arriving just in time, swings onto the stage, removes Swan’s mask, and stabs the now-vulnerable Swan again. As a result, they both are now dying, but the now-saved Phoenix finally sees who the Phantom is, and stays with him as he dies.

So yeah, pretty convoluted, with a little “Picture of Dorian Gray” thrown in for good measure. It’s very well-shot in most places, with a bright colour palette and some fish-eye shots and other moments that remind me of A Clockwork Orange.

The Juicy Fruits (the best-sounding incarnation of this band)

Williams wrote all the music, and performs as the Phantom’s singing voice, and it should be mentioned that the staging of the actual in-film Faust is a glorious tribute to The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, with the Juicy Fruits/Beach Bums now performing as goth-y Greek chorus The Undead. I should mention that Williams’ songs are not at all bad, but as catchy as they are (at times), they never hit the level of “memorable” the way the aformentioned started-as-a-stage-musical songs do.

As a horror/comedy/drama, it kind of works, but it’s a stew with too many ingredients in my view. Luckily, the film improves as it goes on, and the ending is really very satisfying.

The Juicy Fruits become the Beach Bums …

I can see why some people love this film, as it is as bombastic, in-your-face and over-the-top as a rock musical perhaps should be. If it had been polished and honed as a stage show first, I have little doubt that I’d love it like that as well. By the way — why hasn’t this film gotten a proper stage treatment yet?

Rocky Horror, which came out a year later, is frankly a better example of a sex/drugs/rock musical on film on every level. That said, Phantom of the Paradise has its charms, and remains an upstanding denizen of the “midnight movie” genre.

The Beach Bums become Kiss (actually, The Undead)!

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03Oct / 2023

The Black Cat (1934, dir. Edgar G. Ulmer

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½

52-week film challenge, film 34

Note: this is a 20-anniversary, “remastered” version of a review I initially did for my film blog back in 2003, but I did indeed watch the film again on October 2nd, 2023 to refresh my memories for this new version.

As I publish this, it is the beginning of October and the season of the witch, so if you are seeking a slow-burn horror film absolutely brimming with style — this may well be the most Neo-Expressionistic/Art Deco horror movie ever made — starring two absolute legends of horror in unconventional roles, have I got a great movie for you.

I think I first saw The Black Cat when I was about 12, and I’m sure it was one of those that played a role in my lifelong interest in highly-styled architechture and design in films.

At that age, parts of the film were indeed scary, but it was all too weird and mesmerising for me to take my eyes off of it. When I reviewed it again from my own film blog in 2003, the exterior model and interior sets of Dr. Hjalmar Poelzig’s house was the second greatest thing about it, the first of course being the first time I’d seen Karloff and Lugosi acting together without monster makeup.

The third thing about this movie is its incredible time compression. Despite some glacial pacing in some scenes between the two leads, there is plenty of action, especially near the end, and the film packs in necrophilia, satanism, murder, double-crosses, torture, the horrors of war, an undead black cat, secret vaults, and so much more into a film that astonishingly runs only one hour and four minutes.

The film makes numerous references to World War I, but the set design and intentional cruelty (not to mention its unusual setting of Hungary) also act as a prescient forerunner to World War II in some ways. The (black) cat-and-mouse game Lugosi’s Vitus Werdegast and Karloff’s Poelzig play might be seen by some as slow, but the tension between them is delicious.

The basic plot is, at its core, Standard Horror Plot #17: two “perfectly ordinary” strangers meet mysterious character on a train, who happens to be going to the same place they are; incident ensues, so mysterious character offers his new friends shelter at nearby house of arch-enemy; sufficient weirdness starts right from that moment and gets darker and weirder until “happy?” ending.

In this case, the couple is Peter (David Manners) and Joan Allison (Julie Bishop under the stage name of “Jacqueline Wells”), the mysterious (and intense) stranger is the kindly but creepy Bela Lugosi (Werdegast), and the mysterious mansion is the home of Karloff (Poelzig). I should mention that Werdegast has a hulking manservent named Thamal (Henry Cording), who pretends to be Poelzig’s servant.

Joan, who has been injured when their bus (from the train) goes off a cliff, is attended to by Werdegast, but from the moment Karloff (and his geometric hair) appears, the tension and complexity of Werdegast and Poelzig’s relationship just builds and builds. They talk a lot, but don’t say much — their eyes, wardrobe, and silences say a lot more.

And the house!! For an architecture fan like me, the exterior model shot, taken straight out of Frank Lloyd Wright’s dreams, was a thrill. Then, to see the perfectly art-deco 30s interior sets, looking as minimalist and futuristic as 1934 can manage, still astounds and impresses. Poelzig looks completely at home, which is not to say that he ever looks relaxed or comfortable but rather to say that his appearance and wardrobe complement the rooms perfectly.

An important element I missed on earlier viewings of the film is that the house is built on the ruins of a World War I battlefield they both participated in. Werdegast was taken prisoner and spent 15 years in jail, while Poelzig spent the time seducing first Werdegast’s wife and then, when she died, his daughter (yeah, the creep-o-meter just went to 11).

Like the chess game the two men play for control of Joan (Werdegast wants to set them both free, Poelzig has other unnamed and probably unspeakable plans), every interaction between the two is the clash of two opposing forces who both like and hate each other. Incredibly, Werdegast is the hero of The Black Cat, but his fatal flaw is revealed early on: he has a nearly psychotic fear of cats.

When one appears in Poelzig’s house, Werdegast grabs a knife and throws it to expertly kill it. Other black cats (or maybe the same one, as Poelzig makes reference to a cat’s many lives) appear in the film, but the amazing thing is that Werdegast kills a cat right in front of everyone, but nobody seems to think anything of it. This is the only real link to Poe’s work in this movie.

What makes this movie stand out from the thick river of horror movies produced around the same time is that so much of the actual horror is understated or imagined rather than actually seen by the viewer. If it weren’t for the gorgous costumes and sets, this film would be as close to a radio play as a horror movie could get!

My god, this house!

Stripped of their usual arsenal of makeup, Karloff and Lugosi rely on their great chemistry to light up the set, in this — the first of eight films where they appear together. The architecture of the house and interior sets are so stunning (have I mentioned this already?) that it should get third billing, behind Karloff and Lugosi but ahead of Manners and Bishop. As another reviewer noted, “architectural nuts probably rent this movie as architecture porn. The house is that cool.” She’s absolutely right.

Once Poelzig is revealed as a Satanist who has designs on Joan for a sacrifice, the film’s action finally kicks into high gear. Unlike the stage-y verbal jousting of earlier, Werdegast — who every so often says he is “biding his time” for his revenge” — now has to make good on that threat, and quickly.

Well hello, pre-Code 1930s creep-a-thon!

The climax, in which Werdegast “wins” in the sense of triumping over Poelzig is really quite stylish and stunning, but even in shadow, Werdegast’s delight at inflicting torture on Poelzig is a little tough to watch, even 90 years later. The newlyweds, which everyone stopped caring about 30 minutes ago, escape with their lives — which any viewer of The Rocky Horror Picture Show will have seen coming a mile off (and that’s is not the only influence The Black Cat had on Richard O’Brien’s little moneyspinner).

While this movie has some issues of its own — I’m still trying to figure out what an all-American couple like Peter and Joan are even doing in postwar Hungary, the delicious slow-burn and the stars’ chemistry make this pre-code horror movie a time capsule of incredibly beautiful horror like nobody has made since. If you’re ready for something off-beat, classic yet wonderfully dated, comic in spots and scary in a psychological way, you are ready to cross paths with The Black Cat.

The “floating women” effect of Poelzig’s victims is just mesmerising.

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