O Gato Negro

This is a fairly typical old dark house comedy of the sort that was popular in the wake of the Bob Hope Cat and the Canary of a couple of years earlier. Gale Sondergaard is even on hand, as in the earlier film; and this one, while hardly brilliant, has some wonderful photography and great (and exceedingly familiar) standing sets. It's a routine reading of the will plot, with the usual suspects, here more lively than usual, with Runyon refugee Broderick Crawford, Gold Diggers alumnus Hugh Herbert, deerstalker- and meerschaum-less Basil Rathbone, and a sadly defanged Bela Lugosi, in a minor role. If one goes for old-fashioned studio thrillers and isn't too demanding of dialog, which is far from clever, or plot, which isn't too ingenious, this one might be just what the doctor ordered on a dark and rainy night.

That isn't saying that The Black Cat is a bad film, in fact to me it's pretty good. Just that considering the cast and idea it could have been better than it was.

What did let The Black Cat down in particular is Hugh Herbert, whose comedy was always an acquired taste(not a fan personally to be honest) but here he is very over-utilised and really got on my nerves. Bela Lugosi despite looking appropriately ghoulish(that ghoulish close-up is the most memorable his performance gets) and does a good job with his screen time but is wasted, not just because he doesn't have much to do but also his material is not an awful lot to write home about. The film really drags in the middle and not all the script works. The mystery parts are great and Crawford's quip to Rathbone was a delight but parts are a little melodramatic and the comedy with Herbert was like Herbert himself, more annoying than funny.

The Black Cat looks great though, it's very elegantly photographed and the sets/scenery are beautiful and creepy. The music is a little intrusive in places but it's effectively eerie and has a lot of energy as well. The mystery while having pacing issues in the middle is very compelling and suspenseful mostly, with a truly gripping ending that took me completely by surprise. The direction is never too flashy or simplistic and most of the acting is just. Gale Sondergaard is effectively mysterious and the personification of elegance, while Alan Ladd before he made it big plays it straight and more than decently and Gladys Cooper brings bags of class to her role. Broderick Crawford is likable and a lot of fun, his material works far better than Herbert's and he's much better used. Basil Rathbone does his usual solid job in a role that suits him very well and Anne Gwynne is sympathetic and not bland.

All in all, pretty good but could have been great considering the cast. 6/10 Bethany Cox

The Black Cat is directed by Albert S. Rogell and written by Robert Lees and Robert Neville. It stars Basil Rathbone, Hugh Herbert, Broderick Crawford, Bela Lugosi and Gale Sondergaard. Music is by Hans J. Salter and cinematography by Stanley Cortez.

Henrietta Winslow, a cat-loving old dear, is coming to the end of her days. Tonight her parasitic family have gathered at the Winslow mansion to rub their hands with glee as Henrietta's will is read out. But.......

.....Henrietta knew that whom the black cat follows – dies!

"That house is doubly blest. Which to the feline friends gives rest"

It's hardly a classic from the old dark house murder mystery treadmill, but The Black Cat is enormous fun and gets the sub-genre staples spot on. It's a big old fashioned mansion that is host to the creepy shenanigans, complete with secret passageways, revolving booths, suits of armour and roaring fires. There's even a creepy cat crematorium annex in the grounds as well! Naturally it's a stormy night, and naturally the collection of weasels and deviants start getting bumped off one by one. Cue much shrieking, blaming, dodging and the odd red herring. The mystery element is strong, with a good reveal preceding a fiery finale, and there's some high energy antics thrown in for good measure; the latter concerns Crawford's character who jumps through armour, leaps off a balcony and constantly falls down on the floor. Cast are working on a par with the material, with the highlights being Crawford, Sondergaard (who is deliciously spooky) and Herbert (who is the Lou Costello type comedy relief).

More comedy than creeper, but a comfortable recommendation for fans of similar movies. 6.5/10

Rating: *** (of of five)

Greedy family heirs stay at their grandmother's mansion and wait for her to die, so they can collect her money and estate. They later discover that they cannot collect a dime until all of her pet cats are dead as well. Someone in the mansion then begins to murder them one by one. This film has all of the elements of horror. Although it bears a notch below many of the popular horror films released by Universal Pictures, director Albert Rogall's The Black Cat has the "haunted" house scene, a rain storm, secret passage ways and plenty of laughs and scares to make it a good horror film. Basil Rathbone and Broderick Crawford are also both good as the leads, as well as Hugh Herbert providing the laughs. Oscar winner Gale Sondergaard and Bela Lugosi, both playing the servants looked wickedly evil and sinister, and it was my surprise that they were not the murderers when both of their characters were murdered as well. The real killer was a surprise, especially with the premise of the black cat being around at the time of the murders often throws the viewers off. The Black Cat is a good horror film classic with intriguing mystery.

Given one of the most abused titles in cinema history (innumerable films were supposedly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short story but few, if any, bothered to be faithful to it), the plot of this one could go in any direction. Universal had already used the title for one of its most stylish (and potent) horror offerings in 1934, so the 'remake' tried something entirely different: an old dark house comedy-chiller on the lines of THE CAT AND THE CANARY (itself brought to the screen several times, the most recent up to that time emanating from 1939). As always with this kind of film, we get a plethora of characters brought together for the hearing of a will and then starting to die violently one by one; the cast is notable and eclectic – including two horror stars (Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi: the latter was also in the earlier version, where his role was far more substantial), whereas the comedy is supplied by Broderick Crawford (proving surprisingly adept and likably accident-prone!) and the insufferable Hugh Herbert. Of course, there is a damsel-in-distress (pretty Anne Gwynne, also serving as Crawford's love interest) being invariably the one to receive the lion's share of the fortune possessed by the dotty (and cat-loving) owner of the estate; also on hand are Gale Sondergaard (as the sinister housekeeper, a virtual reprise of her role in the aforementioned version of THE CAT AND THE CANARY) and Gladys Cooper and Alan Ladd(!) as mother and son (the former is married to Rathbone, but he carries on an affair with another relative present). Being definitely a B-movie, the film is best compared to similarly modest ventures in this vein: even so, not involving recognizable comics (such as THE GORILLA [1939] did with The Ritz Brothers) or a horrific figure (a' la NIGHT MONSTER [1942]) – both films, incidentally, feature Bela Lugosi in an almost identical (and equally thankless) part – the film ends up not satisfying anyone…even if it is harmless enough as entertainment, the eerie atmosphere well up to par and the identity of the villain (who perishes flamboyantly in a blaze) a genuine surprise.