DVDs of the Week
#3 - The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)
#4 - The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935)A double-bill this week, looking at the first two films pairing classic horror's greatest stars - Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. (I can't see them together without recalling the bit in
Ed Wood when Lugosi (Martin Landau) explodes with rage at the suggestion he was Karloff's sidekick.)
After Universal's box-offices smashes with
Dracula and
Frankenstein (both 1931), the studio brought the leads together for these Edgar Allan Poe-inspired works.
The Black Cat is pure gothic weirdness, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (who went on to make THE no-budget noir,
Detour). Taking place for the most part in an elaborate Art Deco mansion/Satanic chapeel built on a mass war grave, it tells the story of Dr Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi, in a rare heroic role), who returns after 15 years in a PoW camp to wreak revenge on the comrade in arms who sold him out - Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff).
An uninvolving romantic subplot aside - two pale newlyweds emoting woodenly - this smash hit (Universal's top moneymaker of 1934) is a minor classic. Thoroughly gripping, it's bracingly original and teeming with a sense of revulsion at humankind's worst excesses.
Lugosi is compelling as the noble doctor, with Karloff utterly chilling as the superbly-coiffured murderer/war criminal/devil-worshipper. And from start to finish, Ulmer piles on the atmosphere, obscuring a few shortcomings in the script with a mass of mist, shadow and sheer, throbbing terror.
The Raven is less unusual and outlandish, but equally interesting. This time Lugosi is the bad(der) guy - a surgeon thwarted in love who disfigures and dismembers convicts and judges (that sounds like a mid-'60s Bob Dylan lyric) as he plots vengeance on those who've wronged him.
Though there's some lousy, unnecessary comic relief, and the plot lurches around a bit, there's ample compensation via some magnificent set-pieces: escaped con Karloff shooting at his reflection after a facelift from the doc; Lugosi meeting his long-dead wife; and the crazed doctor torturing Samuel S. Hinds using Poe's "pit and the pendulum".
Both films come in crisp black-and-white prints from Second Sight, and have the best sleeve designs I've seen in a long time. Take a look
here and
here.
On a barely-related note, those looking for more Poe goodness beside his books might want to seek out Antony and the Johnsons' musical rendering of his great poem, 'The Lake'.
The Black Cat and The Raven are available on Second Sight for about £6 each.DVD of the Week archive#1 - Let's Get Lost (Bruce Weber, 1988)
#2 - Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973)
