The Black Cat

American honeymooners in Hungary become trapped in the home of a Satan-worshipping priest when the wife is taken there for medical help following a road accident. The picture was the first of eight films (six of which were produced by Universal) to feature Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. It became Universal Pictures’ biggest box office hit of the year, and was among the earlier movies with an almost continuous music score. The film helped to create and popularize the psychological horror subgenre, emphasizing on atmosphere, eerie sounds, the darker side of the human psyche, and emotions like fear and guilt to deliver its scares.

Ulmer put together one of the most disturbing films of the decade, shooting it in nineteen days and at a cost of 95,745 dollars (including the retakes). With its contorted sexual relations, able to astutely sidestep the Production Code, its utilization of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and its obsession with classical music and art direction, The Black Cat has retained a following and resists critical erosion with its patina. [...] Ulmer’s marriage of German expressionism and Ibsenian tragedy has been unique, and his style was almost an anticipation of Ingmar Bergman’s. Of the thirteen horror movies made at Universal in the thirties, only The Black Cat has remained enigmatic, elusive in its underlying meaning. [...] Stripped of its “supernatural fanfaronades,” The Black Cat is actually a macabre study of sexual repression and of Ulmer’s personal equation of fear and death. It really was the first American psychological horror.

Paul Mandell

PRODUCTION: Universal Pictures

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