BELA LUGOSI THREE UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Poe defaced?
RELEASED OUT NOW! 1932-1935 | 15 | Blu-ray
Director Robert Florey,
Edgar G Ulmer, Louis Friedland
Cast Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Sidney Fox, David Manners
Any student of Edgar Allan Poe planning to skip the reading should avoid these pre-Production Code shockers. Murders In The Rue Morgue does feature a deadly ape, but centres on a bizarre plot to inject women with gorilla blood. The Raven concerns a sadist surgeon who has recreated Poe’s pendulum blade to enact “delicious torture”. As for The Black Cat… well, a moggy does briefly appear. But they do share a certain morbidity with their source material, with perverse undercurrents of necrophilia and even bestiality.
All three star Lugosi; two pair him with Boris Karloff. The Black Cat, in which these two horror icons act as equals in an archly civilised scowl-off, is the standout.
It looks remarkable, boldly inserting gleaming modernist interiors where you’d usually find a cobwebbed castle, and is bracingly gruesome, with Karloff’s Satanist keeping dead women displayed in glass cases and Lugosi skinning him alive at the climax! Eddie would surely tip his hat.
Extras All three have critical commentaries; The Raven gets two! A Kim Newman interview (29 minutes) provides historical context. A worthwhile video essay (15 minutes) sees Kat Ellinger striving to define American Gothic; another (13 minutes) superfluously catalogues cat-themed horrors. There’s scratchy archive audio of radio plays of “The Black Cat” (1947, 26 minutes, with Peter Lorre) and “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1941, 27 minutes, starring Karloff ), and a Lugosi reading of the latter (13 minutes). Plus: newsreel footage; trailer; gallery; booklet.
Ian Berriman
That newsreel concerns a competition to choose The Black Cat’s feline star. Winner Mr Jiggs’s young owner was awarded $15.