Featuring as it does as homicidal and nasty-tempered a feline as has ever been shown on screen, Lucio Fulci's "The Black Cat" (1981) is certainly not a film guaranteed to appeal to the average ailurophile. Although the picture jettisons most of Poe's 1843 short story, from which little but the title remains, it still tells an interesting tale indeed. In it, we meet Robert Miles (intensely played by veteran actor Patrick Magee in one of his last roles), a crusty eccentric living in a small English village whose two main hobbies seem to be recording the voices of the dead in a local cemetery and avoiding being mauled by his pet, the titular black tabby. American photographer Jill Trevers (the attractive Mimsy Farmer) investigates after a wave of homicides sweeps through the small town. Along for the ride in a small part is Dagmar Lassander, here sporting a good deal more avoirdupois than in, say, 1970's "Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion" but still giving a blazing performance nonetheless. Fulci's direction here is typically stylish, replete with stalking cat's eye POV and more close-ups of eyes in general than you've ever seen (probably in excess of 100 such close-ups, I'd guesstimate), and Pino Donaggio's intriguing title tune does set the baroque mood nicely. Many events in the film go unexplained (that levitating bed, for instance, and that hanging-cat etching), and a repeat viewing did not help me understand things any better than the first. Though hardly a giallo per se, the picture does feature any number of grisly murders, even if there is never a mystery for the viewer as to who the (four-legged) culprit is. A rampaging bat sequence late in the film seems almost a direct lift, strangely, from an earlier Fulci film, 1971's "Lizard in a Woman's Skin." Still, any movie with cats, rats AND bats can't be all bad, right? And oh...another great-looking DVD here, from the always dependable Anchor Bay.
Review of The Black Cat
