A scary thing happened on the way to the Movie Forums - Horrorcrammers

Which one of you convinced me to watch Blood & Donuts? What a weird little thing that is. Good one!

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You're welcome! Low key one of my favorites.

Tak.
She convinced me too.
She was totally right.

When it comes to under-the-radar, off-beat Canadian vampire films, I'm always right.

I'm willing to concede the point without the caveat.

I'm about half way through The Black Cat. It is really weird and I'm kind of digging it. But it's too late for things that generate angst, so I will have to finish it tomorrow!

Which Black Cat? I just watched the 30s one. Groovy classic horror. My stream kept glitching so I owe it a better watch but I quite liked the climax.

I thought this was just going to be an October-only thing but now that I realise it's an all-year one I keep forgetting to post all the horror films I've seen in the past few months. That's going to be one long post if I ever get around to writing it.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Yep, the 30s one.

Pick one, preferably a slasher, assert that it's a classic, and you will power this thread for weeks.

Let's have 'em.

Here's what I wrote about The Black Cat in the "Rate the last movie . . . " thread.



The Black Cat, 1934

Newlyweds Peter (David Manners) and Joan (Julie Bishop) meet a doctor named Werdegast (Bela Lugosi) on a train ride. Werdegast is returning home from a brutal experience in WW1, hoping to reunite with his wife and daughter whom he hasn't seen in over 15 years, and en route to visit an old friend named Poelzig (Boris Karloff). When the bus crashes, injuring Joan, all three end up seeking shelter at Poelzig's home, where a dangerous game ensures between Poelzig and Werdegast.

There was a short while where I thought that this film might be truly great, though unfortunately an unerring thread of sexism and some plotting/writing issues keep it from achieving greatness.

At its very best, this film achieves a kind of other-worldliness in both content and the way it is filmed. Werdegast learns that his wife, Karen, died. What he (and I as the audience!) is not prepared for is the fact that Poelzig has somehow meticulously embalmed her and she now floats, ethereally, in a glass box in Poelzig's basement, her hair streaming and her feet delicately pointed. After the shock of this scene (and a walk around the basement that shows that she is not the only woman in Poelzig's "collection"), the camera becomes almost disembodied. It roams through a door, up a staircase. Is this Werdegast's point of view? Poelzig's? The effect is startlingly modern, as the roving camera is underscored with Poelzig's narration.

The lighting here is also really great. While the scenes shot in the upstairs part of the house look relatively bright and normal, scenes in the basement have stark shadows that fall at strange angles. One place in the upstairs that darkness intrudes is in Poelzig's bedroom, where, seen at first through a sheer curtain, Poelzig is seen to have taken Werdegast's daughter (who he has also called Karen) as his wife.

Having mainly seen Lugosi in Dracula mode, it was really fun to see him playing a sympathetic (mostly) protagonist. Werdegast is a man who has been hurt many times over, and yet he still retains his humanity and does not want Peter or Joan to be hurt on his quest for vengeance. Likewise, this was a different type of character than the ones I have seen from Karloff before. The two have very strong chemistry as different sides of an unhinged coin--in both men there is the potential for unexpected violence, but for very different reasons.

I also really liked the portrayal of the evil cult that Poelzig leads. There were very much vibes of The Seventh Victim for me in the idea of evil looking very mundane. These are everyday, normal looking people who are totally cool with watching a human sacrifice.

What kept this movie from greatness for me were two different factors.

The first is simply the constant, borderline oppressive sexism. It starts out innocently enough when Peter introduces himself and his wife to Werdegast, "I'm Peter Allison. And this is Mrs. Allison." This is emblematic of the way that women in the film are regarded more as possessions or trophies than actual human beings. To be sure, there is something of condemnation when we see that Poelzig has embalmed, preserved, and displayed Karen like a scientific specimen. But all three of the main male characters treat the women in the film with condescension. This may seem like a small detail, but there is one scene in which three different men just walk into Joan's bedroom without knocking. And instead of focusing on Joan's discomfort, the point of the scene is to reinforce the growing rivalry and tension between Poelzig and Werdegast. The fact that every woman in the last act seems only capable of screaming, fainting, or screaming then fainting doesn't really help matters. There is a short, kind of sexy and fun scene between Peter and Joan--the way that he holds the front of her robe as they lay together and their obvious comfort and attraction makes them feel much more like real people. I wish the film had contained more sequences like this.

The other thing that bothered me was simply a sense of the story having been written a bit carelessly. The movie is called The Black Cat. There's a disturbing sequence early on where Werdegast kills a black housecat and we learn that he has a deep phobia of cats. Later, a cat appears at a critical moment to distract Werdegast. But in the final act, the whole theme of cats just seemed to fall by the wayside. Peter, who was never all that well written in the first place, seems to become even more blundering and more like an instrument of the script. Profound revelations and plot moments are raised and resolved way, way too quickly. Werdegast's story/tragedy has been building the whole film, and then really key parts of it just come and go in like 10 minutes. There isn't time to absorb as a viewer, much less to watch Werdegast absorb these things as a character. I think that it's possible to build tension and generate momentum while still allowing a narrative time to breathe. But The Black Cat barrels full steam ahead to its climax as if its life depends on it. And with such a short runtime, barely clocking in at 70ish minutes, it's not like there wasn't time to spare. I also thought that the film's epilogue was super cheesy and undercut the macabre, dark tone of the rest of the movie.

For all these complaints, however, I really enjoyed this film. The imagery and lead performances were great.

*sneaks in through the back door*

Hey guys. I like horror films as well

Careless writing, rushed resolutions, cheesy epilogues, unclear mythos, etc. are all common problems with 30s horror. I've got the entire Frankenstein series memorized and I couldn't tell you which decade, or even century, they're supposed to be set in. So the fact that the cat-o-phobia was mentioned and then dropped is not out of the ordinary. These were B-pictures and the writer was probably instructed to include at least one cat so that they could put Poe's name on the poster.

Glad you mentioned the chemistry between the romantic leads, because that's an element that I always admired but is rarely mentioned. They're always bland in these films (Manners himself was in at least three of them), but this is one example where they actually appear to be in love. The giggling after Joan mispronounces Poelzig's name seems almost spontaneous. Normally the couple's role is to just look concerned and yell "Darling!" when one of them is endangered, so it's nice to see one that behaves like normal people for a change.

It's frustrating because you can feel that a much more coherent narrative was just within reach!

The problem is that their personality just evaporates once they aren't alone together. Joan's job is to faint. I think I counted 5 separate faintings?

I finally got around to watching Bride of Frankenstein this past October for the Halloween challenge and I was blown away by it. Probably better then the first. Most likely better then the first.
I wasn’t a fan of the first The Mummy (1932). Too stuffy.
I liked the original The Invisible Man. I always enjoy Claude Rains.
Amazon has many older horror films available that I aim to to do a deeper dive on including giallo films from Bava and Argento that I haven’t seen yet.
Then there’s the foreign films that’s available that have interested me, such as Viy, La Lorona, and Impetigore.

I really need to watch those old Hammer Horror films that’s been nagging at me for some time. Specifically their remakes of Dracula, The Mummy and Frankenstein and possibly their sequels.

I should write down a list.....

I also prefer Bride of Frankenstein over Frankenstein. I had a couple issues with the original Frankenstein, but save for a couple minor issues, I thought Bride of Frankenstein was great. I think we're in the minority, but that's okay.

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Yeah, don’t get me wrong, Frankie is great in and of itself as well. But the sequel was much more existential in its treatment.
I also enjoyed, to varying degrees, the remake with Robert DeNiro.

It's actually a commonly-held opinion that Bride is the better film. Not by me, mind you, but I don't think you're in the minority, is my point.

Oh yes. I do particularly like that one. DeNiro's version of the monster is one for the ages.

"I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other."

Yes! He gave the creature a humanity that I hadn’t seen previously.
Too bad the film didn’t explore those ideas nearly enough.