Poe Cinema: The Raven (1935)

As with The Black Cat, while it was featured in Universal Horror, I didn't really become aware of this film until my early-to-mid teens, when I became a real fan of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi as actors, and didn't actually see it until I was in my 20's, as it was part of that same Bela Lugosi DVD collection. What really piqued my interest in both of these movies was when James Rolfe featured them in an episode of the 2009 edition of Cinemassacre's Monster Madness. While they both looked very interesting, I found myself particularly drawn to The Raven, which he described as possibly Lugosi's greatest performance ever, even more so than Dracula. By that point, I'd also seen Universal Horror a few more times and knew that, as controversial as The Black Cat was, The Raven was, as Kenneth Branagh put it, "the last straw" for many critics, leading to the British embargo on horror films. When I finally did see it, it became my personal favorite of the five films in that set (along with The Invisible Ray), as well as one of my favorite Lugosi/Karloff films and classic Universal horror films in general. It seems like I'm somewhat alone in that sentiment, as general opinion on the movie is rather mixed. I've even seen it mentioned in books on bad movies, while Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas, and John Brunas, the authors of Universal Horrors, call it "ill-conceived" in their book. I don't get it; for me, this movie is more entertaining than The Black Cat, which gets all the accolades. I think the main reason for that is, while The Black Cat is a rather enigmatic film, with aspects to its story that are interesting but don't amount to much in the long run, The Raven is much more to the point and knows exactly what it's trying to be. It also has much more to do with the work of Edgar Allan Poe than The Black Cat ever did. And even at a running time of just 61 minutes, it manages to come off as tightly constructed, as well as fast-paced, and ties everything up by the end, even if the actual ending is a bit sloppy and abrupt.

On a foggy night, young dancer Jean Thatcher suffers a devastating car wreck that soon has her at death's door. When the doctors are unable to save her, her father, Judge Thatcher, and her fiancee, Dr. Jerry Halden, contact Dr. Richard Vollin, a brilliant but eccentric and recently retired neurosurgeon. Vollin is, at first, unwilling to perform the operation, as human life and suffering means little to him; it's only when Thatcher tells him that his peers insist he's the only one who can do it that he agrees. He not only manages to save Jean's life but, a month later, she's fully recovered. Vollin, in turn, has become obsessed with her, and it's only made worse when Jean dances to a recitation of The Raven, knowing of the doctor's love for the works of Poe. Concerned that Jean may be becoming infatuated with Vollin, Thatcher asks the doctor not to lead her on. Instead, he learns that Vollin himself is in love with Jean and demands he not see her again. Vollin, however, insists that he must have her, as his desire is clouding his mind and preventing him from successfully completing his research. Shortly afterward, Edmond Bateman, a criminal on the run from the police, comes to Vollin and asks him to change his face. Vollin agrees but first, he asks Bateman to do a job for him that's in his "line of work": torture and murder. Bateman refuses, saying he doesn't want to hurt people anymore, and Vollin then agrees to the operation. But he leaves the right side hideously disfigured and says he will only fix it once Bateman has done what he asks. Bateman has no choice but to agree. That night, Vollin invites several people to spend the weekend at his home; among his guests are Jean, Jerry, and, eventually, Judge Thatcher. Once everyone has turned in for the night, Vollin puts his grisly plan into action. Having built and collected real life versions of the torture devices described in Poe's work down in the basement, he plans to use them to rid himself of the very people he feels are emotionally torturing him, i.e. Jean, Jerry, and Thatcher.

Tackled by a small handful of writers throughout its development, The Raven was one of the first films directed by New York-born Louis Friedlander, who would soon become better known as Lew Landers. Starting out as an actor who appeared in a couple of D.W. Griffith films in 1914, he began working at Universal, first as a crew member on films such as The Man Who Laughs. His directorial debut was the 1934 serial, The Vanishing Shadow, and like Edgar G. Ulmer on The Black Cat, he would shoot The Raven on a short schedule (sixteen days) and a very low budget (however, he ended up going $5,000 over). Despite the outrage the movie caused and its not so good box-office, Landers went on to be a very prolific director, with over a hundred movies and TV episodes to his credit. He worked in many different genres, from westerns to comedies and, of course, more horror films. Some of his other credits in the genre include The Boogie Man Will Get You, a 1942 horror-comedy starring Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre, and The Return of the Vampire, the wartime horror movie with Bela Lugosi more or less reprising his role of Count Dracula, albeit under a different name. As I said, Landers also directed quite a bit of television in his lifetime, including two episodes of The Adventures of Superman, two of Maverick, and one of Cheyenne. He died of a heart attack in 1962 at the age of 61, his last film being a little known item called Terrified, released the following year.

Again, James Rolfe said that he feels Lugosi's role here of Dr. Richard Vollin is his best performance ever, and I'm not all that inclined to disagree with him. While I do, of course, enjoy him as Dracula, his insane energy and magnificent speeches as Vollin really enthrall me. In his introduction, we see just how enamored he is with Poe's work. We start on a shot of a stuffed raven's shadow and pull back to reveal Vollin as he quotes the poem to a man interested in buying his Poe collection for a museum. He goes on to say, "The raven is my talisman... Death is my talisman, Mr. Chapman. The one indestructible force, the one certain thing in an uncertain universe. Death." In a later scene, he admits that he became a doctor because he was fascinated by pain and death, as well as how much pain one can endure, which is why he's also drawn to Poe. He's such a devotee that he has a collection of torture devices from Poe's literature down in the basement. Besides his inherent sadism, we also see early on how egocentric he is. When Thatcher personally asks him to operate on Jean, Vollin remains steadfast in his cruel resolve not to, as human life means nothing to him. It's only when Thatcher tells him that the other doctors have said he is the only one who can save her life that he agrees to it. He's so prideful and arrogant, as well as psychopathic, that he wants confirmation from his peers that he is the best surgeon around before he will save someone's life. And then, after he saves Jean, Vollin finds himself enamored with her. She makes it even worse when, to show her gratitude, she performs a dance to a recitation of The Raven at the theater. Afterward, Thatcher visits Vollin to tell him of Jean's possible infatuation with him, only to learn of Vollin's own obsession with his daughter. When Thatcher forbids him from seeing Jean again, Vollin tells him, "I am a man who renders humanity a great service. For that, my brain must be clear, my nerves steady, and my hands sure. Jean torments me. She has come into my life, into my brain... Judge Thatcher, there are no two ways. Send her to me." Deciding that Vollin is too insane to reason with, Thatcher leaves, as Vollin intones, "Send her, Judge Thatcher. I warn you!"

Tortured by his feelings for Jean, Vollin feels his life is mirroring that of Edgar Allan Poe himself, whose genius he feels was hampered by his feelings of love for the one who was taken from him. For Vollin, Jean is his own personal "lost Lenore," lost because of her father's intervention, and, therefore, he cannot think clearly about whatever future goals and accomplishments he had set forth for himself. If he weren't already insane, this pushes him over the edge and he decides to end his inner turmoil by destroying Judge Thatcher,

Jean, and her fiancee, Jerry Halden. And right to the end, Vollin believes he is doing the logical, right thing and does not think he is at all insane. He hammers this home in one of my favorite moments, when he has Judge Thatcher strapped to a slab, as the bladed pendulum slowly comes down at him. They have this exchange: "What are you trying to do to me?" "Torture you." "Try to be sane, Vollin." "I am the sanest man who ever lived. But I will not be tortured. I tear torture out of myself by

torturing you!" By the end of the movie, with Thatcher about to be sliced in half and Jean and Jerry about to be crushed in a room where the walls come together, Vollin truly feels he has both accomplished and even surpassed what Poe had hoped to do: "What a torture. What a delicious torture, Bateman. Greater than Poe. Poe only conceived it; I have done it, Bateman! Poe, you are avenged!" He then proceeds to laugh maniacally.

Speaking of Edmond Bateman, what Vollin does to him is especially cruel. Recognizing Bateman immediately when he comes to him to ask him to change his face, Vollin intends to make use of his history of murdering and torturing people. Though Bateman initially refuses to do what he asks, when he laments that he believes he's done the awful things he has because people have always treated him badly due to his appearance, he unwittingly gives Vollin a monstrous idea. He agrees to operate on Bateman's face, only to leave the right side

hideously deformed. Even worse, he leaves him alone in the operating room after he removes the bandages and then reveals a series of mirrors behind drapes, so that Bateman sees his new, grotesque visage everywhere he looks. He sadistically laughs at him from an opening in the ceiling, and later tells him, "You're monstrously ugly. Your monstrous ugliness... breeds monstrous hate. Good. I can use your hate. You will do this for me, Bateman... I'll change you, Bateman. You

will look good, the way you wish... First, you must do this job for me, Bateman. I can't use my hand to do it. Your hand is used to torture. Your hand must do it. My brain, your hand." He then forces Bateman to act as his servant, telling his guests that they fought together in World War I and that he was captured and tortured by Arab bandits. He also makes him abduct Judge Thatcher from his room, strap him to the slab beneath the pendulum, and flip the switch that begins it descent. All the while, 

Vollin uses his promise to fix Bateman's face as leverage to keep him from betraying him. Though Bateman, at one point, manages to strap Vollin himself on the slab and start the pendulum, Vollin tells him that he will remain as he is if he kills him. But he underestimates Bateman's own affection for Jean, which proves to be his downfall.

What makes Lugosi's performance in this film so much fun to watch is the sheer range of emotions he goes through. He's ominous when quoting The Raven when we first see him, charming but with a hint of obsessiveness when we see him with Jean, forlorn and with a note of building tension when he talks to his party guests about what he feels The Raven meant personally to Poe, has slowly rising anger about him when Thatcher forbids him from seeing Jean again, is manipulatively sly when he first meets Bateman (you can see the wheels

turning as he figures out how to make Bateman do what he wants, commenting, "You are saying something profound. A man with a face so hideously ugly..."), truly menacing when ordering around Bateman, whom he whips at one point, and forcing his victims into his death traps, and, best of all, absolutely giddy with madness during the climax. When Judge Thatcher first notices the pendulum above him, he says, "What's that?", and Vollin says, "A knife." Thatcher then asks, "What's it doing?" to which Vollin casually responds, "Descending." He's as confident as they come and he's enjoying every minute of it, and it makes you enjoy watching him, despite how demented he is.

As much as I love Boris Karloff along with Lugosi, it's really unfair that, as always, he received not only top billing here, as his role of Edmond Bateman is only a supporting one, but that his salary was double Lugosi's. Moreover, publicity, including Universal's pressbook, focused heavily on him, calling him, "the uncanny master of makeup," which I've heard did very much irk Lugosi. Regardless, I totally disagree with the authors of Universal Horrors when they say Karloff was miscast as Bateman. A criminal who's

on the run after escaping from prison, killing two guards in the process, and horribly mutilating a bank cashier's face with a blowtorch, Bateman comes to Dr. Vollin in hopes that he will give him a new face. Besides wanting to hide from the police, Bateman, not wanting to go on committing the same violent and horrific crimes, feels they come down to how he's been treated because of his looks. He says, "Ever since I was born, everybody looks at me and says, 'You're ugly.' Makes me feel mean... I'm saying, Doc, maybe because I look ugly... maybe if a man looks ugly, he does ugly things." Bateman soon comes to regret telling Vollin that, as instead of fixing his face, Vollin leaves the right side mutilated. He's then forced to perform one more act of torture and death for Vollin, aiding him in taking revenge on Jean, Jerry Halden, and Judge Thatcher, as well as act as Vollin's servant while his "guests" are there. 

In this capacity, Bateman is subjected to more disgusted reactions. Even Jean is at first horrified at the sight of him, but when she learns it's due to a mutilation, she feels bad for him and apologizes to him for screaming. This touches something in Bateman and he tries several times to warn Jean and the others of Vollin's plan, even climbing up through a trapdoor in her room while she's sleeping, only to be forced to go back down before he can speak to her. Eventually, he must do Vollin's dirty work and abducts Judge Thatcher, straps him

to the slab, and activates the pendulum. When Jean is brought down into the basement, Bateman tells her that Vollin is the one who mutilated his face and that, once he does this for him, he'll fix it. Jean, however, warns Bateman that a madman like Vollin would never keep his word and offers to help him herself. Bateman continues going along with Vollin, albeit very reluctantly, but the last straw is when he puts Jean and Jerry in the crushing room. Bateman knows that if he disobeys or kills Vollin,

he'll remain the way he is forever, but he refuses to let Jean die. Vollin fatally shoots Bateman when he lets Jean and Jerry out of the room, but he manages to knock out and drag Vollin himself into the room, activating it before he dies, and killing Vollin and saving his victims. My only real problem with Bateman is how he becomes a living deus ex machina during the climax, as Vollin had won, for all intents and purposes. Also, his affection for Jean is yet another horror take on Beauty and the Beast, albeit a minor one, and by this point, it was already starting to become a cliche.

Though not as extensive as some that he'd worn before, Boris Karloff again had to endure another makeup by Jack Pierce. For his initial appearance as Bateman, Pierce gave Karloff a thick beard, mustache, and eyebrows, akin to what he wore as Morgan the butler in The Old Dark House. After Vollin mutilates Bateman's face by damaging his seventh cranial nerve, he's now clean-shaven but the right side of his face, as well as his mouth, is badly scarred, the eye's lower lid droops hideously, and the eye itself is always fixed to the right. As per usual with Pierce, this was achieved with cotton, collodion, and spirit gum, as well as a glass eye. But, while it is another memorable makeup, as you can see the line between it and Karloff's actual face is much more apparent than usual. And I like how, the same year as Bride of Frankenstein, Karloff did the Frankenstein monster snarl in this movie when he realizes what Vollin has done to him.

Remember back in my review of The Black Cat, when I said that in a movie starring Karloff and Lugosi, anybody else is just sort of there? The Raven is a prime example. While the other actors certainly give fine performances, they hardly have much to do with the little material and short screentime they're given. Since she's the object of Dr. Vollin's obsession and the source of his torment, you'd think Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware) would be a fairly significant character, but that's not the case at all. She's grateful to Vollin for saving her life but, while there is the slightest hint that she does feel something for him, despite what Judge Thatcher tells Vollin, I think it is mostly just gratitude, both for saving her life and for giving her fiancee a job that will allow them to marry soon. When the two of them are alone and Vollin makes an advance on her, she seems to sense his intentions and gently pushes him away. Still, that doesn't stop her from performing a dance to a recitation of The Raven, only intensifying Vollin's obsession. But Jean doesn't think Vollin is dangerous and gladly agrees to be his guest for the weekend, along with Jerry Halden. She's at first frightened at the sight of Edmond Bateman, but once she learns his face has been mutilated, she takes pity on him. Soon, she learns just how insane Vollin is when he takes her prisoner. And when Bateman tells her that he must do what Vollin says so he'll fix his face, Jean tells him that a psychopath like Vollin would never keep his promise and offers to help him herself. It's tempting to think she only said that so he would help her escape but, given the pity she felt for Bateman, including in the very last scene, I believe she was being sincere. In any case, her compassion touches him in such a way that he gives his own life in order to save her and the others. Other than that, though, Jean spends much of her screentime doing little more than the typical routine of screaming and fretting.

The rest of the cast has even less to do. Lester Matthews, Paul Ames from Werewolf of London, barely has a presence in the film as Dr. Jerry Halden, Jean's fiancee. Significantly, he's the one who recommends Dr. Vollin operate on Jean at the very beginning of the film but, other than that, he does absolutely nothing else substantial in the story. He's not much of a hero. He does try during the climax but he gets knocked out while trying to help Thatcher, and is later captured and put into the crushing room with Jean, leading to Bateman

saving everyone instead. Judge Thatcher (Samuel S. Hinds) fares a little better. While he's definitely grateful to Vollin for saving Jean, he fears that she may become infatuated with him, endangering her betrothal to Jerry. When he asks Vollin not to lead her, he not only learns that Vollin himself is in love with Jean but he gets a glimpse of how unstable he is when, after crushing a test tube in his hand, he says, "There are no two ways. Send her to me." Angered when Jean and Jerry go to Vollin's home for the weekend behind his back, Thatcher follows after them. Though Vollin seems to be more reasonable when he greets the judge at the door, when he talks about his obsession with death and torture, as well as the work of Poe, Thatcher becomes absolutely convinced that he's insane. Unfortunately, when he tells Jean and Jerry about this and tries to make them go home with him, they don't take him seriously. As a result, Thatcher soon finds himself at the mercy of the mad surgeon, placed under the deadly pendulum and watching helplessly as the knife slowly descends towards him. Like everyone else, it's only through the intervention of Bateman that he's saved. 

In an interesting goof, actors Spencer Charters and Ian Wolfe's roles are switched around, both in the opening and ending credits. Charters is Col. Bertram Grant, who continually comes to Vollin, asking him his opinion onvarious ailments he claims to have. He and his wife, Harriet (Maidel Turner), are rendered unconscious when Vollin gives them some strong sleeping powder, so they completely sleep through the climax, unaware that the others are fighting for their lives down in the basement. Ian Wolfe plays Geoffrey Burns, whom

his wife, Mary (Inez Courtney), calls "Pinky." Though the two of them come off as a couple of airheads, especially Mary, they do try to help Jerry in his attempt to rescue Jean and Judge Thatcher from Vollin, with Geoffrey futilely trying to get Thatcher off the slab. But, in the end, they prove to not be very effective. 

The Raven proved to be the final film for cinematographer Charles Stumar, who died in a plane crash just weeks before its release in July of 1935. Because of the low budget and very short shooting schedule, he wasn't able to give it as much of the German Expressionist feel as he did on past films like The Mummy and Werewolf of London. He does still manage to come up with some great imagery, like the first shot of Jean driving in the fog, the close-up of the shadow of Dr. Vollin's

stuffed raven before we first see Vollin himself, the dim cinematography of the late night scenes in his house, and the way he shoots the Gothic, dungeon-like staircases and corridors of his basement, as well as Vollin's torture devices, especially the pendulum as it slowly makes its way down towards Judge Thatcher. As for his direction, Lew Landers wastes no time getting into the story. The movie opens with Jean driving along on a foggy night, panicking when she comes upon a detour at the last 

minute, and running off the road. In a flurry of editing, we dissolve to a close-up of an ambulance's door, a shot of the vehicle itself rushing down the street, and then, people standing around Jean's hospital bed, the camera pushing towards Jerry Halden and another man and then going in-between them to reveal her lying there, comatose. We then get several close-ups of a doctor, Jerry, Judge Thatcher, and Jean, before we finally get some dialogue. And even then, the pace doesn't let up, as Jerry immediately comes up with

the idea to contact Dr. Vollin and thus, we're introduced to him and see him take the call while speaking about selling his Poe collection to a museum. The actual operation is done in a similar manner, with a wide shot of the operating room, a close-up of Vollin's face, another wide shot of the assistants bringing Jean inside and putting her on the table, a shot of her face, another close-up of Vollin, another close-up of her, a tighter close-up on Vollin's eyes darting around, yet another shot of Jean, one of Jerry, and a final shot of a doctor bringing the mask for the anesthetic towards the camera. After it goes totally black, the movie transitions to a month later, when Jean has recovered.

There are some memorable shots and instances of camerawork here for sure, such as a number of instances of two characters standing across from each other or virtually nose-to-nose, staring each other down (a great one is a shot of Vollin and Jean looking at each other, with Judge Thatcher in the background, watching what's happening with concern), as well as some slow, methodical zoom-ins, such as when Bateman's mutilated face is first revealed and when Vollin tells his guests about his

fascination with the works of Poe, settling on a side-angle of his face. Editing is also effectively used to create tension during the climax, as they cut back and forth to show how the knife is getting ever closer to Thatcher and how the walls in the compressing room are getting closer and closer to crushing Jean and Jerry. And Bateman's final struggle and revenge on Vollin is done in a series of quick, close cuts rather than in wide shots or one long shot.

The film isn't much for genuine atmosphere until we get into the third act in Vollin's house, which, in classic fashion, takes place on a dark and stormy night. As a storm rages outside, the sound of crackling thunder and shrieking wind are complimented here and there with cutaways of shutters knocking against the wall, tree branches scraping at the roof, the trees themselves becoming uprooted by the force of the wind, and lightning piercing the sky (a very common stock footage

shot). Once everyone else has turned in for the night, Vollin brings Bateman down into the basement and shows him the various torture devices he has down there. While only one of them is actually put into use, we see others like a rack, an iron maiden (in the background), and various chains, metal balls, and cages hanging on the wall. Just the sight of them and knowing what they do is enough to make you wince, and when you add how downright medieval the place looks, the effect is genuinely skin-crawling. Back upstairs, things

remain spooky due to the storm and the darkness, and while he was likely coming to warn Jean, the sight of Bateman coming up through the trapdoor in the dark is quite a creepy one, especially for Jean, as she wakes up in time to catch a glimpse of him.

In a way, The Raven and The Black Cat can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Besides taking their names from the works of Edgar Allan Poe; both star Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi as two disturbed men at each other's throats, one of whom is an out and out villain while the other is sympathetic, despite the horrible things he's done; both involve the female lead becoming the object of the villain's evil intentions, while the nominal "hero" tries to stop him; both take place almost entirely in a house

filled with odd devices and a chamber of horrors in the basement, where the climax occurs and where the villain meets a grisly end; and both films were very controversial at the times of their respective releases due to their grisly subject matter (yet The Raven did very poorly at the box-office, despite The Black Cat being the sicker film). The biggest difference between the two of them is, while The Black Cat used the title of a Poe story as little more than window dressing, The Raven is most definitely based around Poe's work. It may not be a

film adaptation of the actual poem but it does something even more clever in that the poem itself, as well as Poe's literature in general, are a major part of the film, with how Dr. Vollin is not only an aficionado but comes to see himself in the troubled author and his tortured inability to obtain his own personal "lost Lenore," and uses devices based on Poe's work to try to rid himself of his pain. 

Even though The Black Cat is arguably the more ghastly film, The Raven, with its emphasis on torture and sadism, had more than enough for the Production Code Administration to object to. Though the PCA was assured there would be no shots of Bateman's actual operation, and there, indeed, are none, their warnings to the filmmakers that the screenplay was, "Running the risk of excessive horror," seem to have gone unheeded. While Vollin and Bateman are the only ones dead

by the end of the movie, and all of the would-be torture victims escape unscathed, the slow impending doom of Judge Thatcher below the pendulum and Jean and Jerry in the crushing room, the many close-ups of Bateman's mutilated face (there are some memorable ones of his undamaged eye watching the pendulum), and Vollin's almost seeming to get off on torture, to the point where he full-on admits that he likes it, were enough to outrage the censors and critics. After how lax the code's enforcement had initially been since its

establishment in 1930, the PCA's formation in 1934 began to, slowly but surely, ensure that extremely morbid horror films like this would die out by the mid-30's. The Raven, as well as maybe the following year's Dracula's Daughter, with its implied lesbianism elements, can be seen as the last gasps of the Pre-Code era. The film was not only banned in several countries, including the UK, but it helped prompt the British embargo on horror films, leading to a drought in the genre until 1939. This drought would prove devastating for Bela Lugosi, as he would never again reach the heights of success he was enjoying during this period.

Unlike Poelzig's house, Dr. Vollin's home, which you never get a full establishing shot of, looks fairly normal, save for a stuffed raven here and there, and some other oddities, like a miniature, automatic horse race track in the sitting room, where people bet as if they actually are at the races. Said sitting room has a nice fireplace, comfy sofas, and an organ, which Vollin plays for Jean in their first scene together. At the opposite end of the front door is the door to Vollin's office, which also looks

pretty innocuous, as do the upstairs bedrooms. However, there are hints that not all is at it seems, with a turning bookcase behind Vollin's desk in his office revealing an opening that leads down into the basement, and a trapdoor in one of the guest rooms. And once you go downstairs behind the aforementioned bookcase, you find yourself in a medieval dungeon of horror. The first room we see down there is the operating room where, Vollin mutilates Bateman. Again, it looks normal enough

at first, but as we soon see, it's all rigged for Vollin's sadistic pleasure. The door locks from the outside, the drapes behind the table conceal a row of mirrors where Bateman sees his hideous visage reflected multiple times, and there's a sliding panel up in the ceiling, where Vollin looks down on Bateman and laughs maniacally at his suffering. Elsewhere in the basement are the real torture devices, within a labyrinth of stone, medieval-like corridors, such as the chamber housing the slab below the bladed pendulum, the crushing room,

and it's also revealed that one of the upstairs bedrooms is built inside a large elevator that can be lowered into the basement. Everything is controlled by an enormous panel, including metal shutters for the upstairs windows so no one can get in or out, and a switch to shut off the phone-lines. In other words, Dr. Vollin was almost like the original Jigsaw. 

Outside of Vollin's home, the most memorable set is that of the theater where Jean performs an interpretative dance based on The Raven. These interiors should be very familiar to you by this point, as they're those of the Paris Opera House, complete with the lovely seating boxes and the enormous stage. In this instance, the stage is designed with a centerpiece of an enormous barred, rectangular window, with a large floor candelabra on either side of it, atop a small flight of steps. On 

the left side of the stage is a large door with a circular window above it, while on the right is a table with a candle and books. Behind it stands a man dressed up as Edgar Allan Poe himself, reciting the poem, while Jean performs to it. (The performance itself is really nothing to write home about: just Jean dancing around the stage in a costume with a weird mask and black veils.) The film is so insular as a whole that, other than the fog-enshrouded road at the beginning, and shots of the storm raging outside Vollin's home during the climax, the only other exteriors are the outside of a shady place where Bateman is first introduced and the city streets he walks while on his way to see Vollin.

Like in The Black Cat, Jean's car crash at the start of the movie is accomplished through a brief but well-done instance of model-work, and I have a feeling that similar effects were used for the shots of the raging storm during the third act, where you see it blow over trees. And when Vollin brings Jean's bedroom down into the basement, there's an instance of rear-screen projection as he watches the elevator lower down through an open doorway. While it's ambitious in that it's an entire image that slowly moves down, rather than a fixed one with moving elements inside it, like normal, the effect is obvious and the eye-lines between Vollin and Jean don't line up.

Aside from the lackluster supporting characters, my only other qualm with The Raven is the ending, which feels so abrupt and rushed. Vollin has everyone where he wants them: Judge Thatcher is about to be sliced in half, Jean and Jerry are going to be crushed in the compressing room, and Geoffrey and Mary Burns are powerless to help them. He then promises to keep his promise to Bateman and repair his face, but because of his affection for Jean, Bateman turns on Vollin.

Despite his warning that he won't fix his face if he betrays him, Bateman pulls the switch on the crushing room, stopping the walls and opening the door. Vollin, in turn, shoots him, but with his last bit of strength, Bateman rushes at Vollin, overpowers him in a struggle, drags him into the room, and activates it. While Vollin is crushed to death in his own deathtrap, the others take the key off the now dead Bateman, rush to Thatcher, and unlock him from the slab. Once everyone is safe, Mary suddenly screams, saying they forgot all

about Colonel and Harriet Grant, who we then cut to as they're snoozing upstairs, completely unaware of what's happened. That really detracts from the ending's impact, which isn't much in and of itself, as it's just a sudden rush through everything I've described, with the last scene being Jean and Jerry driving home, lamenting Bateman's death. Putting his arm around Jean, Jerry comments, about their nearly being crushed, "I think I better finish the job, don't you? Only a little more gently," and Jean retorts, "So you're the big, bad raven, huh?" Again, so abrupt and "meh," not to mention, again, how much of a deus ex machina Bateman proves to be.

There's very little original music here, save for the theme played over the opening credits, composed by an uncredited Clifford Vaughan. It's okay, but not that memorable, and it's not heard much, if at all, during the movie itself. I also think the freakish music that plays when Bateman's mutilated face is first revealed is also Vaughan's work and, while definitely suitable for that scene, it's not that memorable, either. Much of the rest of the music is recycled from The Black Cat, including Les Preludes, Poelzig's leitmotif, and even Heinz Roemheld's arrangement of the Romeo and Juliet overture, which plays during the ending scene between Jean and Jerry. Both original and classical music arrangements from the 1933 movie, Destination Unknown, were also used in the score, and I think I heard some bits from Werewolf of London as well. This hodgepodge of stock music is a prelude to how a number of the Universal horror movies from the 40's and 50's would be scored.

The Raven is, I feel, one of the most underrated entries in the classic Universal horror cycle. It's a great little flick and a must-see for Karloff and Lugosi fans, especially the latter, who's absolutely marvelous as the insane Dr. Vollin. Despite its short running time and lightning-fast pace, it manages to squeeze in a lot of interesting elements regarding Poe, Vollin's house makes for a great setting, and the film is well-shot and edited. Mind you, it's not perfect, as none of the supporting characters are as memorable as Vollin and Bateman, the music score is nothing special and is mostly recycled, and the ending is very rushed and a bit sloppy, but I'm here for Lugosi and Karloff and they don't disappoint. And since both films run just a little over an hour, The Raven and The Black Cat make a great double feature. So, one dark night this month, get yourself some pizza and soda, sit back, and spend an evening with the original kings of horror. You're guaranteed to have a fun time.

Poe Cinema: The Black Cat (1934)

While I was absolutely fascinated and enthralled by the classic Universal monsters as a young kid, it wasn't until I was older and able to appreciate them that I became a fan of the actual actors who portrayed them. Obviously, I knew of both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff from very early on, when I read up on their iconic characters in those library books, but I didn't start to become interested in them as actors until my early to mid-teens, when I saw some of the films outside their most famous ones. And once I got a taste, I became determined to see every film of theirs that I could, along with other horror legends like Lon Chaney Jr., Vincent Price, and such. The Black Cat was mentioned near the end of Universal Horror, although I didn't pay much attention to it, since it didn't have a monster. I didn't really become interested in it, or even aware of its significance, until I read up on it in a book on horror films at my high school's library, where I learned it was Karloff and Lugosi's first film together. Over time, I learned about and saw more of it, in repeats of Universal Horror during October and when it was featured on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments, at #68, focusing on the scene where Lugosi's character skins Karloff alive. By the time I did see it in my early 20's, I was aware of two things: it was considered one of the best of the many films Karloff and Lugosi appeared in together, and it was quite controversial in its day, containing some rather sick stuff which helped end the first cycle of Hollywood horror in the early-to-mid 40's. Upon watching it, I could understand why it caused such a stir, but the real question, as always, was whether or not I liked it. To this day, I think it's... fine. It's not my absolute favorite movie with Karloff and Lugosi (staying on the topic of Universal, I'm much more partial to The Raven, which we'll talk about in a few days, and The Invisible Ray), nor is it one of my favorite Universal Horrors, but it's certainly not a bad movie. As expected, the two of them give great performances, the film itself is a visual feast, and for the time, it is very bold in its content. But the story is sometimes muddled, with things just happening without explanation and no bearing on the plot, while others come off as confusing due to the editing.

American novelist Peter Alison and his new wife, Joan, are on their honeymoon in Hungary, when they learn that, due to a mix-up, they will have to share their train compartment with another man. That man is Dr. Vitus Werdegast, a psychiatrist who tells them that he is on his way to meet an old friend, Hjalmar Poelzig. During the journey, it becomes clear that Werdegast has some inner demons, as he tells Peter how he left his wife to fight in World War I and was sent to Kurgaal, a horrendous prison in Siberia. He's only now been released after fifteen years. Arriving in Visegrad, where Poelzig lives, they're joined by Werdegast's servant, Thamal, and transfer to a small bus to take them to their destinations. But the bus crashes due to a raging thunderstorm, killing the driver and injuring Joan. With nowhere else to go, the group heads to Poelzig's remote, isolated house on top of a hill, where Werdegast treats Joan's wounds. While Peter and Joan try to get a good night's sleep in the unsettling house, Werdegast confronts Poelzig. He has come to get revenge on him after he, as commander of Fort Marmorus, the site on which his house now stands, surrendered it to the Russians, resulting in the deaths of thousands and Werdegast's imprisonment. Werdegast is also sure Poelzig stole his wife, Karen, and their daughter while he was imprisoned. Eventually, Poelzig shows Werdegast Karen's embalmed, preserved body, part of a collection he keeps down in his basement, and tells him that his daughter is dead as well. Little does Werdegast know that she is alive, is also named Karen, and is herself now married to Poelzig. Moreover, Poelzig is a Satanist who plans to sacrifice Joan in a ritual that will take place the following night. Now Werdegast must wait for the right moment to exact his revenge on Poelzig, as the newlyweds find themselves caught in the middle of the "game" between the two disturbed men.

The film was the second American production for Edgar G. Ulmer, who went on to make many films from the 1930's up to the early 60's. Just 29 at the time, he'd worked as an art director in Austria since he was a teenager, under a number of notable directors. When he made The Black Cat, he took a lot of inspiration from those experiences, both in the film's visual style and its content. Ulmer also showed some serious guts and slyness while making the film. When Universal executives, appalled by the horrific nature of the film, insisted that he shoot some extra footage to tone it down, he instead shot material that was even more morbid than what he'd already done. Shot in less than three weeks, on a budget of just over $95,000, The Black Cat would go on to be Universal's biggest moneymaker of 1934. However, during production, Ulmer began an affair with his script girl, Shirley Beatrice Kassler, whose husband happened to Carl Laemmle's nephew. When Kassler divorced her husband and married Ulmer, he was barred from both Universal and most of the major studios. He was then forced to work almost entirely at Producers Releasing Corporation, a poverty row studio and, apparently, one of the worst at that. He's actually credited with making the best movies they ever released. But his career never recovered from the scandal, which is a shame, because The Black Cat is proof that he did have a lot of talent and potential. Ulmer died of a stroke in 1972, at the age of 68.

Many years ago, I felt that ,while Bela Lugosi was iconic as Dracula, Boris Karloff was a much better actor all-around. Now that I've seen many more of his movies, I feel bad about having thought that way. While Karloff was undoubtedly awesome in every film and television appearance he made, Lugosi was just as talented, even if his type of acting was much more bombastic. His performance here as Dr. Vitus Werdegast is an especially great testament to his talent. As he usually was, he's quite charming and polite to the young honeymooners in his introduction, even willing to sleep in the corridor so as not to intrude upon them. When they decide to let him stay with them for just a few hours, he makes small-talk about their ultimate destination of Gombos, but then, when he talks about going to meet his old "friend," Hjalmar Poelzig, you immediately sense that something isn't quite right. Later, while Peter and Joan are sleeping, Peter catches Werdegast softly touching Joan's hair. Werdegast then explains that he had a wife very much like Joan, whom he was forced to leave behind to go to war. He adds that he was taken to a horrific prison camp, Kurgaal, where, as he himself later says, "The soul is killed, slowly." He emphasizes to Peter, "Many men have gone there. Few have returned. I have returned. After fifteen years... I have returned." Later, when they transfer from the train to a bus, the driver's descriptions of what the countryside looked like during the war clearly pains Werdegast, and for more reasons than you would initially think. Following the bus crash, Werdegast and his servant, Thamal, have no choice but to bring Peter and Joan to Poelzig's home, where Werdegast sees to Joan's wounds. When Poelzig is finally introduced, Werdegast confronts him elsewhere in the house, where we learn the full extent of their venomous relationship and the real reason behind Werdegast's pain: "You sold Marmorus to the Russians. You scurried away in the night and left us to die. Is it to be wondered that you should choose this place to build your house? A masterpiece of construction built upon the ruins of the masterpiece of destruction. A masterpiece of murder. The murderer of 10,000 men returns to the place of his crime. Those who died were fortunate. I was taken prisoner to Kurgaal. Kurgaal, where the soul is killed, slowly. Fifteen years, I've rotted in the darkness. Waited. Not to kill you. To kill your soul... slowly."

By this point, it's clear that, despite how charming and pleasant Werdegast was initially, his time at Kurgaal has driven him insane. And yet, while he's been plotting his revenge on Poelzig for a long time, because of the Alisons, he and Thamal bide their time, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. But Werdegast loses control and almost shoots Poelzig when he learns that he not only stole away his wife, Karen, whom he always had his eye on, but he preserved her body after her death in an obsessive attempt to keep her beautiful. Only the

sight of a black cat, which Werdegast is deathly afraid of, saves Poelzig's life. Worried about Poelzig's sudden interest in Joan, Werdegast challenges him to a game of chess, saying that he must let them go should he win. Naturally, though, Werdegast loses and the Alisons are kept at the house against their will. Still waiting for the right time, Werdegast has no choice but to remain idle, with Thamal obeying Poelzig to that end. It's during the satanic ritual Poelzig performs that night

that they act, rescuing Joan from being sacrificed and urging her to escape. That's when Werdegast learns that Poelzig also eventually married his daughter, whom he was told had died along with her mother. Finding that Poelzig recently murdered her, Werdegast is completely pushed over the edge. He and Thamal strap Poelzig to his own embalming rack and Werdegast takes his revenge by flaying the skin from his face. However, Werdegast himself doesn't survive much longer, fatally shot due to a misunderstanding. Still, he has enough strength left to throw a switch that completely destroys the house. 

Though some viewers see Werdegast as much of a villain as Poelzig, I disagree. While Werdegast is definitely a troubled man who makes some questionable decisions and, by the end of the movie, is crazed to the point of taking a grisly revenge, he still makes an effort to save the innocent couple caught up in his and Poelzig's battle of wills. However, there is no sympathy at all intended for Poelzig, who has to be one of the most vile and utterly evil characters Boris Karloff ever played. From the moment we first see him, which is completely in silhouette as he gets out of bed, we know that this guy is bad news, and the air of menace about him when he enters the room where Werdegast is treating Joan's injuries is overwhelming. We then learn just how much of a monster he is, first in how he gave Fort Marmorus over to the Russians, resulting in the death and torture of thousands of Hungarians, and then built his house on top of the ruins, a house where he commits hideous acts like embalming the bodies of his dead wives and performing rituals of Satanism. And as if that weren't enough, when Werdegast was taken to Kurgaal, Poelzig told his wife that her husband was dead and took her as his own wife, later doing the same to her and Werdegast's daughter when she came of age. He's so determined to have everything that was originally Werdegast's that, when his daughter learns her father is still alive, Poelzig kills her off-camera so he won't be able to take her away. After Werdegast fails to shoot him when he sees his wife's preserved body, Poelzig makes his feelings clear: "Are we men or are we children? Of what use are all these melodramatic gestures? You say your soul was killed, and that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmorus , fifteen years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead? And now you come to me, playing at being an avenging angel, childishly thirsty for my blood. We understand each other too well. We know too much of life." He then adds, "We shall play a little game, Vitus. A game of death, if you like."

Though Poelzig says their game will begin once the honeymooners have gone, the evil glint in his eye when he looks at Joan, even when he's putting on a very thin veil of charm, says otherwise. Werdegast knows exactly what it means, and they play chess to determine whether the couple will leave or not. Though it goes on for a while, Poelzig wins, fundamentally sealing their doom. He also sees to it that there is no way at all for them to escape, as both the car and the phones are sabotaged. Come that night, the Dark of the Moon,

he intends to make Joan a sacrifice in his satanic ritual. However, something unexpected happens during the ceremony, which Werdegast and Thamal use as a distraction to rescue Joan. And when Poelzig follows them down into the cellar, he almost succeeds in overpowering Werdegast in a fight. But thanks to Thamal's intervention, Poelzing is chained to his embalming rack, stripped to the waist, and his face is skinned by Werdegast, making his death just as gruesome as it is painful.

While it didn't require elaborate makeup like Frankenstein's monster or Imhotep, Karloff's look as Poelzig is very striking and menacing. Jack Pierce gave him a gray wig with a very pronounced, wide widow's peak, some very notable sideburns, dark eyebrows, and even some dark eyeliner for just that added touch of evil. Just as noteworthy is his wardrobe, which consisted of form-fitting, completely black sleeping clothes for the film's first act (they kind of remind of the outfit he wore as Ardath Bey in The Mummy), a black sort of smoking jacket for the middle portion, and finally, a black-and-white satanic priest-like robe, complete with the medallion of a pentagram that he wears around his neck.

As was often the case when a movie starred Karloff and Lugosi, the rest of The Black Cat's cast are just kind of there, and that's especially true when it comes to Peter (David Manners) and Joan Alison (Jacqueline Wells). Their only purpose is to be the normal people caught in the middle of this battle between two madmen, but while their performances are certainly not spectacular, they're acceptable, if nothing else. Manners' role as Peter Alison is not much different from those of Jonathan Harker in Dracula and Frank Whemple in The Mummy, as he's, once again, the handsome beau of the female lead and, also like in those movies, not an effective hero at all. In fact, he's confined to a cell in the basement during much of the third act, so Werdegast and Thamal are the ones who save Joan. Even worse, when he tries to escape, he fights with the Majordomo, only to get knocked out again. When he finally does escape near the end of the movie and grabs a gun, he ends up shooting and fatally wounding Werdegast, thinking he's part of Poelzig's scheme. Still, he and Joan are able to escape before Werdegast destroys the place completely. Peter does have some memorable moments. He says Werdegast's assumption that the narcotic he gave Joan has made her a temporary medium is, "A lot of supernatural baloney," to which Werdegast responds, "Supernatural, yes. Baloney, perhaps not." Shortly afterward, Poelzig enters Peter's room, unaware that he and Werdegast switched bedrooms, and makes an ominous threat that awakens him with a start. Once the two men leave, Peter says to himself, "Next time, I go to Niagara Falls." And at the very end of the movie, when Peter and Joan are on another train, they read a review of Peter's latest mystery story in the newspaper. While the work is praised, they're dumbfounded when the critic goes on to say, "We feel, however, that Mr. Alison has, in a sense, overstepped the bounds on the matter of credibility. These things could never, by the furthest stretch of the imagination, actually happen. We could wish that Mr. Alison would confine himself to the possible instead of letting his melodramatic imagination run away with him."

Jacqueline Wells has even less to do as Joan Alison. While she initially reminds Werdegast of his long lost wife and becomes the focus of Poelzig's evil intentions, she doesn't do anything that memorable except scream and faint. Save for the scene where she enters the room after Werdegast has killed Poelzig's cat and behaves and speaks very strangely, like she is in a trance (she later tells Werdegast that she has no memory of what happened), the only notable thing she does is discover that Werdegast's daughter, Karen, is still alive and is Poelzig's latest wife. She later tells Werdegast this when he and Thalmus rescue her and, combined with the discovery that Poelzig has since murdered Karen, it prompts him to take his gruesome revenge on his enemy. Other than that, Joan is no different from a typical leading lady of horror films from this time period. 

One character who I find kind of awesome is Thamal (Harry Cording), Werdegast's servant. A big, burly guy who never says a single word, he obeys Werdegast just as implicitly as the Majordomo obeys Poelzig. After Werdegast has learned of his wife's grisly fate, Thamal is suddenly about to take the initiative and go kill Poelzing but Werdegast stops him, telling him that they must bide their time and, until he says so, he must do what ever Poelzig says. To that end, he even prevents the Alisons from leaving and helps imprison Peter. But once Werdegast seizes his chance, Thamal helps him rescue Joan. He also proves to be extremely tough as, when they're confronted by the Majordomo, he shoots Thamal, but he's still able to grab him and beat him into submission before collapsing. A few minutes later, despite being mortally wounded, Thamal pops up again and helps Werdegast overpower Poelzig and tie him to the embalming rack, before finally dying.

The Majordomo (Egon Brecher) is also pretty sinister and proves to be more formidable than you would think by looking at him. He follows Poelzig's bidding to the letter, putting Peter in a cell down in the basement, helps Poelzig plan the ceremony for that night, and fatally shoots Thamal during the climax, though it doesn't stop him from beating him to death. Karen (Lucille Lund), Werdegast's daughter who is now Poelzig's wife, is only in a few scenes, as Poelzig orders her to stay in their bedroom while everyone is there, but I still

cringe when I think about a young woman like her being married to and sharing a bed with a middle-aged creep like Poelzig. We know that Karen was very young, perhaps only two years old or so, when Werdegast was sent to Kurgaal, and if you add on the fifteen years, that wouldn't even make her twenty. Ugh. Also, is Karen just dumb or something? Right after Poelzig tells her to stay in their bedroom the next day, he says out loud, "No one shall take you from me. Not even Vitus, not even your father." And yet, when Joan tells Karen she knows her father, she says her father died in prison. You could argue that she was asleep when Poelzig spoke to her but she was awake just a moment earlier, asking him what was going on, and in a wide shot, where Poelzig looks through a book on the Rites of Lucifer, you can see that Karen is awake beside him. Then again, she doesn't react at all when Joan insists that her father is in the house and has come for her, so she may be a little slow on the uptake. Lund also appears as the preserved body of Werdegast's wife in the glass case.

The day after the accident, a police lieutenant (Albert Conti) and sergeant (Henry Armetta) come by Poelzig's house to gather what information they can. However, they become distracted when the lieutenant gushes about his hometown, Gombos, the Alisons' ultimate destination, only for the sergeant to insist that his hometown, Pisthyan, is better. It's not important but it's a funny little exchange, with the sergeant telling the lieutenant, when he says Pisthyan was "alright" ten to fifteen years before, that he's taking things a bit too far. After the lieutenant tells Peter that he hopes they can go on to Gombos, the sergeant again insists upon Pisthyan as soon as the lieutenant is out of ear-shot. And finally, if you look closely at the cultists who attend Poelzig's ceremony, you can see John Carradine among the crowd. He's later plays the organ in an overhead shot. Also, according to IMDB, one of the cultists is King Baggot, the star of 1913's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

According to his daughter, Arianne Ulmer Cipes, Edgar Ulmer was heavily involved with the film's visual style, particularly when it came to the distinct look of Poelzig's house. While the few other sets, like the inside of the train (the opening scene at the station is stock footage from another film) and the Visegrad station exteriors, are definitely normal, once the characters enter Poelzig's home, it feels as if they've left the real world behind and entered into his. Situated at the

top of a large hill, his house looks like nothing you'd expect to see in films made at this time, combining his own dark, disturbed mindset with his prowess as an architect. Ulmer based its design on the architecture of a German art school called the Bauhaus, giving it a very modern, Art Deco feel, with everything looking as though it were made of stainless steel, and with such interesting details like a short, spiraling staircase in front of a wall made up of many small squares, a section 

underneath that's shaped like an inverted triangle, with circles in its center, sliding doors to the various rooms, as well as the front door, rather small, compact chairs, and even high-tech stuff like an intercom in Poelzig's bedroom and what looks like a digital clock at Peter's bedside. Speaking of Poelzig's bedroom, it's striking in that it has what looks like a veil surrounding it, and a bizarre screen to the right of it. The other bedrooms are also unusual, looking more like rooms in a hotel rather than someone's house, and they're connected

to each other through sliding doors. The sitting room is probably the most normal-looking one in the house, kind of looking more like an office, but it still has that feeling of being off-kilter. But it's in the house's lower levels, reached by another spiraling staircase beyond a door, where it goes from off-putting and bizarre to downright horrific. In the dark, underground tunnels and corridors where the fort's weapons were kept, Poelzig has built rooms housing the bodies of his preserved wives, as well as the room containing the

embalming rack and medical instruments, and a rotating room that moves away from the door, with the opening now blocked by the wall, which is where Peter is kept prisoner (although he escapes very easily). Poelzig's satanic ritual is conducted upstairs, in a spot where Joan is tied to an altar that looks like a slumped over cross with beams going through it, surrounded by bizarre shapes that look straight out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and which also contains an organ that Poelzig plays. 

Not surprisingly, given his background, Ulmer and his cinematographer, John J. Mescall (who was working frequently with James Whale at the time), totally bathed the movie in the look and feel of German Expressionism, with incredible instances of light and shadow. Notable examples include the first time you see the interior of Poelzig's house, with the lights slowly coming up as the front doorbell is rung; Poelzig's own introduction, where he's first seen in silhouette after he rises up in bed 

and switches on the beside lamp (isn't his head shaped like the Frankenstein monster's in that shot?); all of those shots down in the basement early on, especially when Werdegast is shown his wife's body and when you see the shadow of the black cat in the doorway, which badly frightens Werdegast as it falls along the wall to his right; and the shadow of Werdegast skinning Poelzig alive at the end of the movie. Besides the lighting, Mescall also shows off his penchant for moving the camera almost completely through a stage, as seen during

the first shot of the interior of the house, when Poelzig walks through the house and basement, and, most notably, in an extended tracking shot that starts on Werdegast after he's been frightened by the cat and goes out the door, through the hallway, and back to the staircase that leads down from the upper section. There is a dissolve here and there during that sequence but it's very impressive, especially since it appears to be Poelzig's POV, as he talks to Werdegast about how they're both "the living dead" and mentions the game that they're

going to play. Poelzig's growing unhealthy interest in Joan is visualized early on in a close-up of his hand gripping a small sculpture of a nude woman, leaning back on her hands, by the arm. And when he's being skinned, his agony and inability to escape is emphasized with a close-up of his hand writhing within the shackle.

Ulmer took inspiration from German cinema in other ways. Poelzig is not only named after Hans Poelzig, the art director on 1920's The Golem (which Ulmer claimed to have worked on, among other notable German movies of the time, but there is no evidence that this was true), and based him on legendary director Fritz Lang, whom he was an admirer of but also felt was a complete and total sadist. (Lucille Lund, who played Karen, said that Ulmer himself was sadistic towards her when she rejected being his girlfriend.) And the bus driver who dies early on was based, visually, on a similarly unlucky character in F.W. Murnau's The Last Laugh.

As with most of these early films, this isn't exactly a special effects tour de force, but what few effects that are here are done effectively. They both involve exterior shots of Poelzig's home, such as the establishing shot of it sitting up on a hill, a graveyard at its base, and at the end, when it's destroyed in a massive explosion. The explosion itself is not much to write home about, as it's just a bunch of flashing lights and old-fashioned blasting sounds, but it serves its purpose.

The Black Cat is definitely one of the darkest and most somber of the Universal Horrors, an atmosphere that's punctuated all the more by its striking and shadowy visuals. Very early on, when Werdegast is first introduced, we get hints of his sad, tortured character when he looks out the train's window, then looks at Joan as she sleeps and reaches at her hair in a melancholic manner, before telling Peter a bit of his tragic backstory. Then, when they arrive in Visegrad, it's raining and

miserable, and as the bus driver talks about the war and how many men died during it, Werdegast grimaces at the memories he's bringing back up, especially when he notes that Poelzig built his house at the site of Fort Marmorus. Even before we enter Poelzig's home and see how bizarre it is on the inside, we get that establishing shot of it sitting up on a hill in the midst of the thunderstorm, overlooking a graveyard down below, an image that becomes more significant when we learn that he betrayed the men under his command at the fort

and left them to die. And as the movie goes on and we learn just how depraved Poelzig is, and how the, ultimately, good but unhinged Werdegast plans to take revenge on him, the atmosphere outside the house continues to be downbeat and miserable. The sky remains overcast throughout the day, and the transition to night, with the wind blowing through the trees, signifies the Dark of the Moon, where Poelzig plans to sacrifice Joan as part of his satanic ritual.

The film is also among the most depraved and perverse horror films made during the Pre-Code era. For one, Satanism is a part of the plot, with Edgar Ulmer and his co-screenwriter, Peter Ruric, taking inspiration from notorious occultist Aleister Crowley (if you look at pictures of Crowley in his ceremonial garb, you may notice that he looks quite a bit like Poelzig), and I've read that it was one of the first movies to deal with this subject matter. For another, you have the aforementioned

hideous idea of Poelzig sharing a bed with young Karen, as well as his preserved wives, which give serious hints of necrophilia. All of that is made even more hideous when Werdegast discovers Karen's body in the embalming room, ready to take her place with Poelzig's other wives. Speaking of which, the sequence where he walks past their bodies, before bringing Werdegast down there, was the result of a reshoot. Universal executives were appalled by what Ulmer was filming, particularly the skinning alive scene, and gave him two days to

shoot new material in order to tone down the horror. Instead, Ulmer shot this, and the executives were completely oblivious as to how even more horrific it made the film, and let it pass (it's baffling to think that they didn't get it). That brings us to the skinning scene itself. Even though Poelzig is an evil person and deserves everything he has coming to him, it's still cringe-inducing to see that close-up of Poelzig's hand wriggling in the shackle, the shadow of Werdegast scraping the skin off his face, and the sound of him yelling in agony.

As bold and striking as the film is, it has virtually nothing to do with the Edgar Allan Poe short story. Ulmer himself admitted that the title was nothing more than a ploy by the studio to pique the public's attention, and it wouldn't be the last time they would do that. The only real connection is Werdegast's intense case of ailurophobia, or fear of cats, so strong that he actually throws a knife at a black cat when it appears in the sitting room's doorway. You don't ever learn why he has this phobia, it only comes up a couple of times altogether, and its only significance is that it prevents Werdegast from killing Poelzig after he sees Karen's preserved body.

That serves as a nice segue into one aspect of the movie that keeps me from absolutely loving it: it's a case of style over substance. While it's top notch on a visual and technical level, the story is sometimes convoluted. The basic plot is simple enough, but the way it builds and builds on the depravities that Poelzig has committed makes it feel like it's trying very, very hard to just shock you over and over. There are also random things that happen and don't amount to much, if anything, in

the long run. After Werdegast gives Joan a narcotic while treating her injuries, she walks around in a trance-like state for a bit. When Werdegast kills Poelzig's cat, Joan enters the room, just stares at Peter when he talks to her, then walks up to Werdegast and says, in a seemingly amused tone, "You are frightened, doctor?", before sleepily turning to Poelzig and saying, "You are our host." Joan is taken back to her room, and when Peter asks Werdegast why she's acting this way, he

explains, "Hyoscine affects certain people very oddly. One cannot be sure. Sometimes these cases take strange forms. The victim becomes, in a sense, mediumistic. A vehicle for all the intangible forces in operation around her." It doesn't matter, because when Joan wakes up the next morning, she doesn't remember anything after the crash, and the issue is never brought up again. Then there's the black cat itself. Not only is Werdegast's fear of cats random, with no impact on the story whatsoever, but so is a

conversation that he, Poelzig, and Peter have about the mystical qualities of the black cat. Peter brings up how Joan was affected when Werdegast killed the cat and the doctor writes it off as coincidence, but then says, "Certain ancient books say that the black cat is the living embodiment of evil. At death, that evil enters into the nearest living thing." Poelzig adds, "The black cat does not die. Those same books, if I am not mistaken, teach that the black cat is deathless. Deathless as evil. It is the origin of the common superstition of the cat with

nine lives." I bring this up because, later on in the film, we see Poelzig carrying and stroking a still very much black cat, which later frightens Werdegast and keeps him from killing Poelzig. It could be argued that Poelzig simply has more than one cat, but I can't help but wonder if this was meant to validate that conversation, that this is the same black cat that Werdegast threw the knife at, alive and well because, as those ancient texts say, it simply cannot die. But, again, it never becomes a major issue and is forgotten by the third act. 

And speaking of the third act, specifically the climax, there are some things that happen here which are just confusing. Just as Poelzig is about to sacrifice Joan, a female cultist suddenly shouts and faints, as if she saw something that horrified her. Until just recently, I wasn't sure what happened, although I had heard a couple of rumors. One was that it was originally intended for the ritual to cause her to orgasm, with the scream being one of ecstasy. Needless to say, that idea didn't go over

well, so they had to rework it so seemed like a scream of fear. I felt the orgasm theory made sense, as the woman in question does look excited in the close-ups and wide shots of her listening to Poelzig speak in Latin beforehand, and I doubted that a cultist would become upset at something she has to have taken part in before. But, apparently, that is what happens in the film as it is. Looking at the scene more closely, I now realize that the cultists had their backs turned while Poelzig moved in on Joan, and that woman turned around, looked, and

screamed and fainted at what he was about to do. I never realized that until just now, as the editing and camera angles don't make it all that clear, but I'm still incredulous that she didn't realize what Poelzig was up to. I've heard another theory, which states that there was a deleted scene or shot where Werdegast tipped the woman off to distract the cultists so he could rescue Joan, as it's only because of her that he's even able to do so. Again, that would make a lot more sense, but there's no evidence that any such moment ever existed. So, it seems like the reason behind why the climax even happens at all is a completely random and ridiculous one.

While the climax itself is fairly exciting, there's another instance where the editing and speed of the action makes it difficult to discern what just happened. Werdegast and Thalmus rescuing Joan and taking her down into the cellar is inter-cut with Peter attempting to escape his cell. He gets the door open, walks out and sees one of Poelzig's preserved wives in the room beyond, then we see that the Majordomo is down there. He approaches the door Peter is about to come through and Peter,

in turn, hides to its side, waiting to ambush him. When he creeps in, Peter grabs him from behind and the two of them fall to the floor, struggling with each other. We then cut to Werdegast and Thalmus carrying Joan down the stairs leading into the basement, and when we cut back to Peter, he's suddenly lying on the floor, unconscious, and the Majordomo leaves him there, leading to his fatal confrontation with Thalmus. It's so confusing and happens so fast that I didn't process what went

down initially, and it's only when Peter regains consciousness while Werdegast is skinning Poelzig alive that I remembered he was still a part of the action at all. There's also a continuity error: after he knocks Peter out, the Majordomo takes his gun and uses it to shoot Thalmus, but when Peter regains consciousness, he finds the gun lying at his side. But, as confusing as that is, it doesn't take away from the impact of the climax, as Werdegast learns that Poelzig has truly taken everything from him and he gets revenge by shackling him to the

embalming rack and skinning him. Then, when Peter comes to save Joan, she has to remove the key to the room from Thalmus' dead hand. Werdegast tries to help her but Peter, not knowing of his intention, shoots him. Once Joan unlocks the door and tells Peter that he was only trying to help, Werdegast tells them both to go while they can. As they run for it, Werdegast walks over to a control panel of switches and says to himself, "It's the red switch, isn't it, Hjalmar? The red switch ignites the dynamite." He throws said switch and adds, "Five

minutes. Marmaros, you and I, and your rotten cult will be no more." He pulls one final switch and says, "It has been a good game." With that, the demolition charges, left over from the fort, is ignited and the place is blown sky high.

After Dracula and Frankenstein had no music scores, save for the opening and ending credits, and The Mummy and The Invisible Man each had brief instances of score, The Black Cat is really the first Universal Horror to have music playing throughout much of it. Compiled by Heinz Eric Roemheld, said score is made up of numerous classical pieces. For instance, Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture is used as the leitmotif for Peter and Joan, and is heard many times throughout the film whenever they have a tender moment. Poelzig has a very strong, leitmotif that's heard just about every time he enters into a scene (said cue is a piece by Robert Schumann with the mouthful of a name of Quintet for two violins, viola, cello and piano in E flat major, opus 44). There are a couple of cues by Franz Liszt that stuck out to me when I first heard them, as they were later played in the film, Werewolf of London. One is a menacing excerpt from Les Preludes, which is heard during the aftermath of the bus accident and when Poelzig is standing outside, watching the sky as the night of the Dark of the Moon begins. The other is a somber piece that plays in the scene where Poelzig is looking at his preserved wives. In the scene in the sitting room, where Werdegast kills the black cat, Franz Schubert's Unfinished Symphony makes yet another appearance, playing on the radio. And before the cultists arrive, Poelzig plays Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on the organ. There are many other classical pieces heard here, with some works by Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, but those are the ones that stand out to me specifically.

While it's not a favorite of mine, The Black Cat is, nonetheless, a must-see for fans of classic horror and especially of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Not only do you have two powerhouse performances from them, but you also have an interesting, eerily-designed setting, wonderful Expressionistic cinematography, and a lot of ballsy material for a 1930's film, including Satanism, necrophilia, pedophilia, and flaying of skin. But, ignoring the fact that it has nothing to do with the Poe story, none of the other actors are able to match up to the two stars, the film is more concerned with its visual style and shocking content rather a tight story, given the random and inconsequential plotpoints, and there are moments during the climax that can confuse you, even if you are paying the strictest attention. Still, there's plenty here to recommend the flick, and at just 65 minutes, it's definitely not much of a commitment to watch.