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Wednesday, February 28, 2018

THE BLACK CAT (1941)

Only the title and a demoted Bela Lugosi remain from Edgar G. Ulmer’s truly strange BLACK CAT of 1934. This one hunts for shivers & laughs with Dark-and-Stormy-Night/Old Dark House tropes and misses badly, wasting a game cast in the process. It starts with the usual family-gathering for a reading of the will, but this time before the ailing matriarch is dead. Not to worry, she’s soon bumped off. Someone wanted their share right away, but didn’t know that nothing gets handed out until all the cats on the gloomy estate (there are hundreds) have died. This leads to more killings, of would-be inheritors & cats, before the culprit is found. Not a bad little set-up, but the script feels thrown together with forced comedy from Broderick Crawford & Hugh Herbert constantly interrupting any hope of suspense from Basil Rathbone, Gale Sondergaard, Gladys Cooper, young Alan Ladd or a barely used Bela Lugosi. Lenser Stanley Cortez throws a lot of shadows around, but hack director Albert S. Rogell can’t pull anything together.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: James Whale’s THE OLD DARK HOUSE/’32 gets closer to the mark, though it’s plenty arch in its own way. OR: As mentioned above, 1934's BLACK CAT.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note the billing for supporting player Alan Ladd on this French Poster reflecting his post-WWII stardom.

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