Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff take on Poe in Edgar G. Ulmer's THE BLACK CAT, on DVD from Umbrella Entertainment.

Following the successes of Tod Browning's DRACULA and James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN that made stars of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff respectively, their careers diverged significantly with Karloff proving his ability in mainstream efforts for other studios while also starring in Universal's MASK OF FU MANCHU and THE MUMMY while Lugosi was primarily exploited as a horror star in Universal's MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE and a series of lesser independent films (as well as a memorable supporting role in Paramount's ISLAND OF LOST SOULS) before the studio attracted the actors back with idea of pairing their two horror stars in the first of five genre collaborations for the studio before the pair reunited on at RKO for THE BODY SNATCHER.

The first of their collaborations was THE BLACK CAT in which American honeymooning couple Peter (David Manners, THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD) and Joan Allison (Jacqueline Wells, NORTHERN PURSUIT) are on a train bound for Visegrád, Hungary when a mix-up with the booking finds them sharing a compartment with Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi) who is headed in the same direction to visit an "old friend." The trio share a bus along with his majordomo (Egon Brecher, REBECCA) but they get into a crash when the road crumbles away and the four seek shelter in the home of architect Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff) who built his Bauhaus ultra-modern monstrosity atop the ruins of Fort Marmaris which he once commanded and where are entombed the bodies of ten thousand men killed during the first World War. With Joan sedated and Peter tucked in for the night, we learn that there is no friendship between Werdergast and Poelzig who betrayed the fort to the Russians leading to Werdergast's imprisonment for fifteen years during which Poelzig made off with his wife and daughter both named Karen (Lucille Lund, BLAKE OF SCOTLAND YARD). Poelzig reveals not only that Werdergast's wife and child are dead but also that he has preserved Karen's beauty through embalming. Werdergast means to kill Poelzig but he must bide his time, even if it means that the Satanist might make Joan the centerpiece of a midnight Black Mass.

Made just before the Hayes Production Code became more of a limiting factor in Hollywood films, THE BLACK CAT is one of the studio's darkest works of the Golden Age thanks primarily to the direction of Edgar G. Ulmer, a German immigrant who had studied under theater director Max Reinhardt and worked as an uncredited set designer on a number of German expressionist films including METROPOLIS, M, and THE GOLEM during the Weimar Republic when a combination of artistic experimentation and production budgets allowed for creative free reign. THE BLACK CAT is an art directed movie with every shot a striking compositional arrangement of performers, props, decoration as well as shadows creating geometric patterns slashing across the frame vertically or diagonally. Sometimes the film dispenses with characters altogether and explores the sets through moving camera carried along by Karloff's voice alone. The Black Mass is a wonderful set-piece that surely must have influenced later cinematic visualizations including one such sequence in Sergio Martino's ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. While the film follows Universal's practice of scoring with arrangements of classical music, THE BLACK CAT extends the scoring beyond credits accompaniment to mood and thematic commentary. Rather than featuring two monsters, the film positions Lugosi atypically as a sympathetic character, hell-bent on violent retribution but concerned for the safety and survival of the honeymooners while Karloff conveys a modicum of sympathy in his own obsession with Werdergast's wife and what the loss of her has lead him with his occult interests. Wells is hamstrung by the script which allows her moments of mysteriousness early on but falls back upon a lot of screaming, while Manners on the other hand gets to be a more active hero than DRACULA's Harker. While Ulmer had enough of a budget to realize the impressive sets, he proved equally adept at using the most minimalist elements of set design to convey atmosphere in his Poverty Row features and even lower budget films that came later, most notably the noir masterpiece DETOUR. The film's concession to the Edgar Allan Poe story is Werdergast's crippling fear of cats which on one occasion saves Poelzig's life.