Edgar G. Ulmer: A Retrospective Pt2. "The Black Cat"(1934).
When I first started this retrospective, I intended to start with Detour, Ulmer's most famous film, until I realized that it would be wiser to start with his earliest acclaimed film and then work my way up to his later acclaimed film. Surprisingly, this also coincided with the quality of his output in terms of worst to best! So that's why I decided to cover The Black Cat('34) first, Bluebeard('44) second, and then Detour('45) third. So let's get moving.
If you think for a minute that The Black Cat will have anything to offer if you're a Poe fan, I suggest you look elsewhere. There's more of TBC in Dwain Esper's infamously godawful Maniac(coincidentally released the same year!) than in this film. Whether you consider that a weakness(Being outclassed by Esper of all people is embarrassing indeed) or overlookable(the story really wouldn't work except as a short film or anthology film segment, and plenty of good films differ from their source material) should set the tone for you depending on which camp you fall under. Oh, it does have an ebon-furred feline prowling about, and some marital homicide and a body being hidden, but for Poe fans that's it. The film itself is an art-deco version of a Weird Tales pulp or a Crane Wilbur-ish Old Dark House with Mad Inhabitants-stage play. But is it good? Let us see...
After a prologue introducing the actors one by one(god I hate those, they always take you out of the film) subsides, the film begins with a honeymooning couple; Brad & Janet the Allison's, on the orient express. Peter(that jerk David Manners, seriously, did Universal have anyone else available as a leading man?)is a self-described "Important writer of Unimportant books" and Joan(Jacqueline Wells) is your typical simpering heroine with no real defining personality traits. If they had intended on doing anything…improper inside their coach compartment, their chance of doing so is soon squashed by the arrival of a mysterious man named Dr. Vitus Werdegast(Bela Lugosi). Werdegast is visiting an old friend of his in Hungary, and will be meeting his servant at the station. However, speaking of impropriety, Vitus starts displaying an odd look of recognition in his eye; and this being a Lugosi character, that can’t be good, and worst of all, it’s directed at Joan. She resembles his long-dead Princess Ananka wife he left behind during WWI. Most men would overreact to a man eyeing their wife, but Peter just brushes it off.
Could you say no to that face?
After the train stops and Werdegast picks up his servant(Harry Cording), the foursome gets in a bus and travels through the almost-torrentially raining countryside. The bus crashes however, and our heroes are forced to take shelter in the ominous fortress of what turns out to be Werdegast’s “friend”; architect and former general Hjalmar Poelzig. Does the fact that Poelzig is introduced in silhouette, sits up stiffly like a corpse, and is played by Boris Karloff kind of give you a hint as to what kind of chap he is? Turns out Poelzig is responsible for, well, where shall we begin?
1) He sold out his troops in WWI in order to return home and seduce Werdegast’s wife while Werdegast languished in a prison camp for 15 years.
2) He decided to marry Werdegast’s daughter Karen when the wife died.
3) He keeps the wife preserved behind glass with dozens of other cold dead lovelies.
4) He became a satanic High Priest(?? Just roll with it) and is planning a new black mass quite soon in fact. (Gee, since Joan looks like his and Werdegast’s wife, who do you think Poelzig has his sights set on being the human sacrifice?)
5) He built his house directly over the graves of the men he sold out.
6) He has the most out-of-place looking Hungarian villain’s lair in cinema history: A square glass house with hideous art-deco furnishings. Seriously Hjalmar, get some stone bricks and cobwebs or something. He does make up for this minor grievance by keeping around several black cats, which Vitus is deathly afraid of.
Looks like Poelzig has an ace up his sleeve and our heroes are screwed right? Well, hell hath no fury like a mad Bela Lugosi!
TBC is an odd film in more ways than one, and that’s saying a lot. On the surface, this sounds like one of the best Universal horrors, certainly one of the most perverse. War-time betrayal, revenge, satanism, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, human sacrifice, rape, cruelty to animals, torture and bicycle-riding policemen who argue over the merits of their respective hometowns. Strong stuff for the 30’s, and it comes complete with two featured roles for the screen’s most acclaimed horror stars. Plus it has fancy camerawork, an all-classical soundtrack, bizarre art-deco architecture and it brings up war politics as well. It’s gotta be great right?
Well if that was the intention, then no. For a film which struts out such strong stuff, it’s treatment is no more substantial or intelligent than a Republic serial or PRC shocker that might dare the same. Is this art? No, this is sleaze. Exploitation.
“What?” you must be crying. “How can you say that about such a beloved classic!?? You hypocrite! You’re one of the biggest promoters and fans of sleaze whose work I’ve ever read! You castigate Pauline Kael for calling A Clockwork Orange sleaze, but then you go and call a far-less violent film sleaze! You hypocrite! You are no better than her!.”
Well, I don’t mean to come off that way, but allow me to explain, and I think you’ll agree. Just hear me out. Also, I do not find anything in this film offensive at all, just addressing how 30’s audience must have felt. I also have nothing against exploitation films either, but I know one when I see it.
First, let’s ask ourselves, TBC has found it’s classic reputation based on what exactly? Well, to be cynical, Ulmer’s post-Detour respectability. But here that’s not the case, TBC became an infamous film long before Detour was made. It caused an absolute censorial furor when it first came out. And though the critic's furor, while incredibly stupid as all horror film censorial attacks are, were absolutely right about it being exploitative. It was using some amazingly sordid stuff as subject matter to lure people in, throwing in the biggest niche names it could find, and feeding it to the masses. Did it handle those things intelligently, to tell a story that could be told no other way?
No. It glosses over it’s most sordid aspects. By 30’s standards, this is understandable, even the most risqué material imaginable had it’s own bounds of good taste. So don’t expect to see, or don’t even think that the filmmakers wanted to put in if they could, hardcore nudity and gore. Of course not. That’s just silly. It’s a given that TBC wouldn’t have gotten too far-out there. But again, does it handle it’s offensive elements intelligently? Does it explore them?
Fuck no.
The difference in my mind between an intelligent film which deals in unpleasant subject matter, and an exploitative one is how it handles it. People who oppose exploitation films often accuse the makers of such films for lingering on filth, reveling in it, showing too much of it. They say that “classy” filmmakers simply imply it or show it briefly. Actually, I’ve found that the opposite is often true. Real exploitation filmmakers have nothing to say, or something anyone could say, and they rarely say it if at all. And though they include offensive elements, they rarely focus on them. They throw that stuff in to titilate, not explore. For example; an exploitative filmmaker making a rape-based film, for example, would show the rape/sex scenes. Wham. Bam. Thank’s Ma’am. And then he’d be done with it. An intelligent filmmaker would focus directly, unrelentingly on the rape scenes, to show the horror of it, and if you get off on that, then you’ve misinterpreted the film. Real “message” filmmakers focus on ugliness in all it’s glory and aren’t afraid to look away, and if they do, they still focus on the build-up, the aftermath. Pauline Kael says Kubrick’s Clockwork doesn’t focus on such things, and is merely there to celebrate Alex’s crimes. What shit. Not only do we see the build-up and aftermath of the crimes, the revenge a victim of Alex’s mayhem seeks is in fact THE major plot-point later on to the point that it involves the second-billed actor! Clockwork is unflinching, exploratory, and yes, disgusting. But anyone who sees it as titillating can only feel that way if they themselves find it titillating. So I guess that somewhere, every “moral guardian” and “offended person” has some severe skeletons in their closet. To make my point simply, “classy” filmmakers don’t shy away from filth, they focus on it. Exploitative ones merely flash filth to titilate or lure.
And flash it is all Ulmer does with TBC’s sordid subject matter. He could have focused on it intelligently and subtly, but he doesn’t. The story could be told without most of the stuff he crams in just as effectively. Poelizg’s (loosely) Crowley-based Satanism? He could have been worshipping Cthulhu or been a spy with a stylish way of disposing of victims and it would not have altered the plot any. The incest with Karen? The plot could simply have had Poelzig abandon her or force her to be a slave, and it would still build-up to the final sequence when Vitus learns what has happened and goes mad. Does it make Poelzig evil and perverse? Yes, but we figure that out a moment before we actually physically see him. And his house, clothes, hairstyle and actor should all be a tip off to his evil nature. Throwing in such horrendous atrocities and explaining them away as typical for a man like him would work if the character was given any subtlety. He’s not. It doesn’t re-inforce anything about the villain other than how evil he is, which we already know. He becomes over-the-top, cartoonish evil, no he ceases to be evil, in fact, he becomes a caricature, worse, throw in his mock sophistication, and he becomes camp. And not in the good intentional way that Dr. Pretorius, Edward Lionheart, Count Von Krolock and other camp horror-villains are. Add the jokey, almost sub-Ackerman level one-liners such as “Even the phone is dead!” and he becomes just a joke.
Subtlety!
A much praised element in the film is that the film is making some kind of anti-war statement. But is it? Possibly. And this comes out in one of the better-handled sequences in the film, the highlight in fact. In this scene, Poelzig taunts Werdegast by pointing out how cliché his quest for vengeance is, and points out how both of them, figuratively, and perhaps literally in some ways, both died in the war. “Are we any less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn assunder?” “Are we not both the living dead?”. This scene, and the music accompanying it, is truly mesmerizing and haunting as both characters descend the steps into the cellar, symbolically leading to hell. It’ a fantastic, poetic sequence, but it raises more questions than it answers. Did Poelzig, who considers himself a victim of the war, become evil due to war trauma? Is it his way of coping? But didn’t he also sell out his troops, profiting from the war? Is he plagued with guilt? Perhaps, but we never see it since so much emphasis is placed on how irredeemably evil he is that there's never any attempt to portray guilt or pathos. Was he evil before the war? Surely he wasn’t as bad as he is now to have once had a kindly man such as Vitus as his friend. But these questions are never answered. Sometimes such unexplained villain origins where we wonder how they got that way have an inpenetrable mystique that gets ruined if too much light is shed on their backgrounds; like Star Wars’s Darth Vader, or the Joker in Batman or Universal’s short-lived “Creeper” series starring Rondo Hatton. But those unexplained characters and the loose ends they leave hanging are tantalizing, romantic even. In TBC, they are not tantalizing. They are frustrating. That makes for a world of difference. Ulmer may have been trying for subtlety, but all this approach does is obscure whatever artistic merit he may have intended for the film to have. The scenes during the mass where someone says “With a grain of salt” and "Beware of dog” in Latin have been pointed out by several reviewers. Was this a way of calling the film out as trash or a secret spoof? If so, it simply invalidates all the film’s positive qualities, and does not excuse the bad ones.
As a horror film, TBC, which is entirely built on the shock value of the Satanism etc, is laughable. There are only two effective fright scenes. The first is when Poelzig observes a gathering storm in preparation for the sacrifice. All this scene does is further rob the villain of any depth by implying he truly has supernatural powers. The second is a memorably bizarre scene where everyone, even Werdegast’s assistant, turns on the Allisons and prevents them from leaving. It’s shocking, but feels more topsy-turvy and disjointed than anything else. For all it's sordid subject matter, TBC succeeds in raising less chills than your average PRC programmer.
As far as performances go, Manners and Wells are unbelievably awful. They are so bland, insensitive and stupid you really wonder if they weren’t the models for Brad & Janet in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Lame romantic leads in horror films are a staple, and the honeymooning/car-wreck plot device is also common in films like this. But here, it all feels so stereotypical and done-to-death that it’s actually sad. I’m no RHPS fan by any means, and am less curious to see it’s direct inspirations(which I probably have)but here I really gotta wonder. Lugosi is okay as Werdegast, but doesn’t really shine until the very end when he goes mad. Mostly he looks bored, or is so over-the-top that fits of laughter are the only response you can possibly give. Karloff is competent as Poelzig, underplaying what could have been hammy second-rate kitsch, but only a few scenes can really be called special even by his staunchest admirers. Lucille Lund, as Karen, Werdegast's daughter, is ethereally beautiful and innocent. Her brief screen-time is probably the best work in the film.
The music also goes a long-way towards wrecking the film. Some of the stock classical cues work, even the much abused and overrused horror-favorite “Tochatta and Fugue in D-minor” by Bach. But mostly it makes the film feel like a Looney Tunes short. Combine this with Lugosi’s cartoonish overracting, the film's manic pacing and a bizarre comic relief sequence with two bickering policemen, and the Looney Toons impression becomes harder to shake.
So in the end, how is TBC? It’s no work of art that’s for sure. It’s no Red Zone Cuba thank god, but it ultimately comes off as just a routine old dark house thriller with a bright new house, lurid, cheap and exploitative Weird Tales-cover trappings, comical acting and music and is filled to the brim with unusually lofty but mostly failed thematic ambitions. In short, the film is either a pretentious exploitation film or a huge artistic flop that succeeds at being a nightmarish mishmash but not at causing nightmares.
Some consider this feel to be an attempt at surrealism, but there’s a difference between surrealism and disjointedness. For a film which supposedly handles so many thematic things subtly, it sure as hell doesn’t when it comes to everything else. What symbolism there is ultimately comes off as sledgehammer at best. Many praise the film for it’s adult subject matter and lack of a monster, but I can’t help but feel that most TBC fan boys who like it for these qualities are simply trying to overcompensate when being seen with more unapologetic horror fans who go for say, Toho films and such. These overcompensators however, can’t seem to take the true perversion found in say, a Franco film, so a 30’s film; which is always going to be watered-down by default, is smooth sailing for them. A way to have their cake and eat it too. And for those who truly do appreciate the film for it’s perversity and can handle worse, I can’t help shake the feeling that those fans are the Famous Monsters of Filmland-bred equivalent of those Saw & Hostel fans who “ooh” and “aah” over each new gore effect and the satisfaction of seeing something sick with no regard for art. Only difference is that TBC fans “ooh” and “aah” over seeing it implied that there’s graphic torture, etc. And that’s what TBC is: The Hostel of it’s era. It has Satanism! Necrophelia! War! Rape! Pedophelia! Torture! It’s not a bad or sick film, and neither are the people who watch it, but based off almost all positive reviews I read of this film, the appeal is much the same as a modern torture film, and the fans of either no more mature, simply different in their time-period film preference.
Not so different...
So what is there about the film to enjoy? Camp. Camp and the fun of seeing Boris & Bela duke it out in wacky art-deco sets. No maturity here. Fun? Yes. Art? No.
BUT………
It does introduce one thing; what may be the closest thing Ulmer ever had to a recurring theme, and evidence he was a true auteur, as it appears in all three of his most famous films. What is it? Tune in next time to find out, when abqreviews tackles Ulmer’s 1944 strangler-on-the-loose mini-epic, Bluebeard!
