The black cat (1934)

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Movie
German title The black cat
Original title The Black Cat
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1934
length 66 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Edgar G. Ulmer
script Peter Ruric
production Carl Laemmle
music Heinz Roemheld
camera John J. Mescall
cut Ray Curtiss
occupation

The Black Cat is a 1934 horror film starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff and produced by Carl Laemmle . The title was chosen based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe , although the content of the film has nothing to do with Poe's story. The movie's relation to the title is that the main character, Dr. Become a guest who is terrified of black cats.

action

The (stage) Author Peter Alison and his wife Joan meet their honeymoon by Hungary to the Hungarian Dr. Become guest. When the bus crashed in the middle of a storm and the driver died, Werdegast took the young couple on foot to his “friend” Hjalmar Poelzig, to whom he was already on the way. Poelzig, an Austrian architect, built his house in the middle of the steppe (in the modern New Objectivity style ) on the ruins of a fortress called "Marmaros" which was destroyed in World War I and the military engineer was once in command of it and lives there with his sinister one Servant Thamal. The allegedly largest cemetery in the world is located on the former battlefield here.

When Werdegast is alone with Poelzig, the viewer learns that the two are anything but friends: After the fortress was destroyed, Werdegast was imprisoned in Russia for fifteen years while Poelzig had "taken in" his wife and daughter. Werdegast is now looking for his family.

Poelzig shows Werdegast in the cellar of the house, where there is still an old ammunition depot, a chamber. Inside is the embalmed corpse of the woman. Karen, the daughter, also died, claims Poelzig. While the latter is actually keeping his daughter as a lover in his house, he has already come up with the next diabolical plan: he also wants the young Joan Alison. The Alisons' attempt to leave the house fails due to the broken phone and the fact that two police officers appearing in the house are only on their patrol by bike.

When Poelzig kidnaps Joan in order to sacrifice her to a black mass in the cellar, Peter and Werdegast go to the rescue independently of each other. Werdegast frees Joan and kills Poelzig by chaining him and starting to peel off his skin. When Peter joins them, he believes the guest is threatening Joan and shoots him before Joan can call out to him that this is her liberator. Werdegast is seriously injured. Joan and Peter escape the building via a long spiral staircase , while the dying guest blows up the ammunition chamber and with it the building including the fortress ruins below. In the final scene, Joan and Peter are in the compartment of a train from Visegrád to Budapest.

useful information

  • Visegrád is the name of a city about 40 kilometers north of Budapest on the Danube .
  • The film had only a tight budget and was shot on 19 days (2 of which were added spontaneously), but it still made a fortune.
  • Shortly after 1933, the figure of the architect Hjalmar Poelzig by director Ulmer, who was himself of Austrian and Jewish descent, was somewhere between the most modern technology and the cult of Satan and was obviously inspired by the German painter, architect, set designer and university professor Hans Poelzig (born April 30, 1869 in Berlin; † June 14, 1936 in Berlin). The sculptural film architecture in the style of Expressionism for the film Der Golem, How He Came Into the World (1920) by Paul Wegener and Carl Boese is remarkable. In his Berlin years from 1920 onwards, Poelzig , who was initially still strongly committed to this architectural expressionism , illustrated the change that took place as a result of the industrial revolution from handcrafted production to industrial production : through his buildings, he was involved in creating the basis for the New Objectivity . What he called the material style , due to its simplicity, emphasized the properties of the materials used much more than the ornamental style that was widespread until the 1920s. (see also new building )

background

The film was shot in the spring of 1934 at Universal Studios , and production costs were about $ 95,000. The black cat premiered on May 3, 1934 and grossed $ 236,000 in the United States. This made the film the biggest success of the year for Universal. In Italy, Austria and Finland it was immediately banned because of its cruelty. In Germany it was first seen on October 21, 1967 in a television broadcast by NDR . In Great Britain the film was released under the title House of Doom .

The black cat was the first of eight films in which the two horror icons Boris Karloff ( Frankenstein ) and Bela Lugosi ( Dracula ) appeared together. It was also the first film in the opening credits of which Karloff was only mentioned by his last name. According to Ulmer, the title of the Edgar Allan Poe story was only used for advertising purposes. Hjalmar Poelzig, the name of the architect in the film, refers to the German architect Hans Poelzig , whom Ulmer met while filming Der Golem, How He Came Into the World .

As one of the first films, The Black Cat was almost always accompanied by music. Works by Ludwig van Beethoven , Franz Schubert , Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Liszt can be heard among others . Boris Karloff played the toccata and fugue in D minor on the organ for one scene .

The couple Peter and Joan Alison, who have an accident on their honeymoon and are forced to spend the night in an eerie mansion, served as a template for Brad Majors and Janet Weiss on the Rocky Horror Show , who similarly happened.

Reviews

  • "(...) Horror film in a fully technical environment in the style of New Objectivity , in which the horror stars Karloff and Lugosi, who play together for the first time, move with a dash of winking irony; the contrast between Lugosi's heavy accent and Karloff's lisping upper class adds to the charm of the genre classic. English at. " (Rating: 3 stars = very good) - Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 727

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