The Black Cat (1941)

With Hans Salter and Frank Skinner’s orchestrations a-blazin’ we do open on a dark and stormy night at the Winslow estate, which, as we see, as the camera takes us through the front gate and heads for the main house, is completely overrun with cats. But as we head inside, we discover the grounds have also been inundated with potential heirs, holding an anxious vigil as the grand matriarch of this cavernous manor, Henrietta Winslow, lingers near death -- stress on the ‘lingers.’

Thus, when the doctor reports this was just another in a long line of false alarms, as Henrietta once more defies medical science and keeps on ticking, instead of looking grateful for the good news, the disappointment and dashed-hopes shown by each and every relative is palpable -- some more than others. In fact, one of those heirs had already clandestinely contacted an estate agent, hoping to liquidate everything for cash as soon as the old girl goes; only she won’t go.

Cut to the estate agent in question, Gilbert Smith (Crawford), currently en route to the Winslow mansion; a place he is very familiar with having grown up in the area, hanging around until being banned from the grounds for allegedly throwing rocks at all the Winslow cats. Here it should be noted that the Winslow estate is a stray cat refuge, complete with a massive marbled crematorium, where the eccentric old matriarch enshrines all the ashes of her dearly departed feline friends.

All of this Smith reveals to his bumbling assessor, Mr. Penny (Herbert), filling him in on their latest assignment. He also confirms our suspicions, saying, You bet your ass the unscrupulous Winslow offspring are willing to cash-in while “the death rattle is still rattling,” and will probably cash-out on their bequeathments so fast they’ll leave nothing behind but the body.

Also keenly aware of this is Henrietta (Loftus), who decides to rub her greedy relatives’ collective noses in the cat poop a bit by revealing the contents of her will:

To her daughter, Myrna Hartley (Cooper), she leaves the sum of $100,000; to Myrna’s second husband, Montague Hartley (Rathbone), the sum of $10,000; and she leaves the same amount to Myrna’s step-son, Richard (Ladd). As for her grandchildren from Myrna’s first marriage (-- her first husband apparently died, an architect, who designed and oversaw the construction and renovation of the Winslow mansion and grounds), she leaves Margaret (Dodd) and Stanley (Eldredge) the same sum of $100,000 each; which leaves Elaine (Gwynne), her favorite granddaughter -- well, maybe the one who wants to see her dead the least, who gets the bulk of the estate, including the house and grounds.

There is also a token sum left for her trusted groundskeeper and cat-wrangler, Eduardo Vigos (Lugosi); but strangely, there’s no mention of anything for her long-time housekeeper and confidant, Abigail Doone (Sondergaard). At least not yet, because the reading is suddenly interrupted by the bumbling arrival of Smith and Penny.

And while Mr. Penny wanders off to inspect all the household antiques, doing his best to purposely damage and deface as many as possible because he feels this will make them seem more “authentic” and fetch a higher price, Smith presents an authorized check and letter from a potential buyer to Montague, revealing to the others that he was the one who hired him.

After seeing Henrietta is still alive, and realizing he’s jumped the gun, Smith tries to salvage the deal by cutting out Montague altogether and pitches the offer to the owner herself instead. Here, Henrietta recognizes Smith -- seems he liked to hang around the mansion with Elaine when they were kids -- and agrees to hear him out. But while they banter, unseen hands slip something into the glass of warm milk Abigail brought for Henrietta.

Then, once Abigail clears out, the cantankerous old coot tries to get Smith to drink the milk for her, to fool and appease her taciturn hausfrau. But he declines over not feeling so hot due to his massive cat allergy kicking in. From there, negotiations breakdown and, in the end, Henrietta adamantly refuses to sell and moves to finally take a drink only to have it swatted away by Smith, who points to the dead cat on the floor that got to the milk first.

Fearing one of her heirs is now trying to kill her to get their hands on the inheritance sooner than later, Smith is told this will do them no good. Seems Henrietta was interrupted before she could finish reading her will, with the final stipulation stating that when she dies everything will go to Abigail, who will be entrusted to run the grounds and take care of all the cats. And so, until Abigail and all her cats are dead, her immediate family gets doodly-squat. That is, they won’t unless someone keeps trying to speed that process along...

Make no mistake, as a studio, Universal was the King of Horror in the 1930s, starting with a talkie remake of their silent version of The Cat and the Canary (1927) as The Cat Creeps (1931), which ushered the way for Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932) and launched their extended franchises, which, by the 1940s, were still going strong but aiming for a more juvenile audience.

Tucked in there, too, was The Old Dark House (1932), another dark ‘n’ stormy night tale set in a creepy mansion full of kooks, family secrets, and closets chock-full of skeletons, which, along with The Cat Creeps, spawned dozens of imitators, mostly from low-tier studios like Astor -- Frank Strayer’s The Monster Walks (1932) immediately springs to mind, or Monogram or PRC.

But by the end of the decade these tales of murder and inheritance grabs were just about played out. That is, they were until Paramount got the notion of injecting some full-frontal humor into their own remake of The Cat and the Canary (1939), turning comedian Bob Hope loose on the proceedings to great box-office success.

And when they saw that Hope’s follow up feature, The Ghost Breakers (1940), proved the idea of an all-out horror-comedy hybrid wasn’t a fluke, Universal was soon siccing Abbott and Costello on a haunted house, turning Oh, Charlie! into Hold that Ghost (1941), while simultaneously dusting off some old and moldy murder-mystery scripts that would curtail quite nicely into this kind of mayhem and comedic make-over.

One such script by Eric Taylor and Robert Neville -- which was your standard reading of the will / body-count programmer with an Edgar Allan Poe twist -- was found by associate producer Burt Kelly, who turned it over to Robert Lees and Frederic Rinaldo, who had turned The Invisible Woman (1940) into an outright yuk-fest the year prior.

Lees and Rinaldo were also responsible for a lot of the gags in Hold that Ghost, making them the studio's new go-to-guys for this kind of thing, resulting in a run with Bud and Lou that finally culminated with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1949) and Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951).

The Kingsport Times (June 15, 1941).

As for their efforts to spin The Black Cat (1941) into comedy gold, well, the results are a tad disjointed and borderline schizophrenic.

As critic Kevin Wallace stated (The San Francisco Examiner, April 24, 1941), “Universal’s The Black Cat has a titular bond to Edgar Allan Poe and a plot relationship to The Cat and the Canary. Gathered in an isolated mansion -- around which rumbles thunder perpetual, and through which wind secret alleys full of hooded figures and cats -- is an unsavory crew of greedy relatives … There are also two murders, stitched together with a lot of horrific grue, gags, and chases. However, even a slapstick mystery needs to maintain coherence -- or mood, or suspense, or whatever you call it -- by motivating its madness, and giving its characters a program of sustained ‘point of view’ for the audience to grasp on to.”

And that is one of the film’s biggest issues, as Wallace so eloquently puts it, “In The Black Cat, you’re never quite sure how the characters are taking it all -- as melodrama, or nonsense.” And this uncertainty shows as the film tries (and mostly fails) to be three things at once: the set-designs, the cinematography, the trailer, and Lugosi say it's a Horror movie; the script and half the actors think it's a Comedy; while the other half and all the bodies piling up in the secret passages says Murder Mystery.

“Usually pictures of this kind have one big name, a dozen unknowns, and a “B” budget,” said Frederick Othman in his column for the United Press (St Petersburg Times, March 4, 1941). “Perhaps the first all-star movie whodunit in years, this one includes Hugh Herbert, Broderick Crawford, Basil Rathbone, Anne Gwynne, Gale Sondergaard, Bela Lugosi, Claire Dodd, Cecilia Loftus and Gladys Cooper.”

The Daily Times Advocate (July 15, 1941).

Here, Othman also painted a delightfully ominous picture when relaying his visit to the production of The Black Cat back in 1941. “So there we were at Universal studios,” said Othman. “The rain was coming down in sheets and we made a dash to stage six, and walked inside where we thought we’d be dry, and that was a mistake. The boys in the stage were creating an artificial rainstorm exactly like the real one without. They were even a couple of jumps ahead of nature: One gent stood at a big sheet of copper, suspended from the rafters. He’d shake it -- and there’d be thunder. Another stood at an electrical switch. He’d give it a jolt -- and he got lighting.”

Othman also commented on how the production was pressing their luck. “The picture started filming on February 13, with 13 actors on the job. This was not exactly a coincidence. The experts figured maybe this circumstance might get the proceedings a line of publicity. Director Albert Rogell and his 13 actors helped things along by walking under ladders, lighting three cigarettes to a match, and whistling between scenes.”

“And we’ve had nothing but trouble,” Rogell told Othman. “Yesterday, a lamp fell from the scaffolding and missed one of the grips by inches. We’ve had fuses blow out where fuses never had blown before. People have tripped over cables and skinned their knees. Pressure’s been bad on our rain pipes. The thunder’s gone off when it shouldn’t and this morning we couldn’t stop the lightning. We’re getting jittery. We’re beginning to figure maybe we were silly.”

Now, someone with the comedy chops of Hope or Bud and Lou might’ve salvaged something here but, alas, Broderick Crawford was no match to fill the shoes of these comedians, though he tried valiantly; and the official comedy relief, Hugh Herbert, a guy I normally find hilarious -- yes, even in Sh! The Octopus (1937) -- is stuck with a very limited shtick that goes absolutely nowhere as it’s slowly beaten to death by director Rogell, who was hired a mere five days before filming was set to commence, which is another indictment on the slap-hazard nature of the production.

There are a few gags that work well, like Herbert’s Mr. Penny always unwittingly stumbling into one secret passage after another, or Lugosi’s Eduardo dudded-up in that Elmer Fudd get-up, who has to round-up a herd of cats when Crawford lets them loose, thinking he was trying to get rid of a body -- though the only reason that’s funny is due to Lugosi calling for the kitties with his goulash accent.

And that’s the main thrust of the film: Smith blundering around with much gusto at the slightest hint of trouble, only to find one false alarm after another until there really is something wrong; but by then he’s been cry-wolf’d one too many times already, and now his indifference could lead to another death as suspicions move from one family member to the next after Henrietta finally dies in the crematorium at the hands of a cloaked killer, who makes this murder look like an accident.

Thus, no inquest is called for and Abigail officially takes over; but the rest of the family refuses to leave, conspiring to lawyer-up and break the will together. Of course, none of this can happen until a cataclysmic storm passes; and so everyone spreads out to their own separate corner, allowing Smith to rekindle some old feelings for Elaine. He also sniffs-out that Montague is in dire financial straits, and who also might be having an affair with Margaret, which is kind of confirmed when the ever-belligerent Richard catches them alone.

Then, the first false alarm comes with a scream from Abigail’s bedroom, where they find her body in a trunk with a black cat -- only she isn’t as dead as they all thought. (Quick editor’s note: though she loved cats, Henrietta had refused to let any black cats on the property, feeling they were harbingers of death. And judging how this little guy keeps showing up whenever there’s a body lying around, maybe there’s something to this. The film's conclusion, not mine.)

And though her recall is groggy, what happened to Abigail might just have been another “accident” -- especially when you consider her door was locked with no other way in or out. Well, except for the secret passage, of course, but the absent-minded Mr. Penny can’t remember where the entrance to that is.

Accident or no, Smith thinks it’s high time to call in the police only to discover all the phone lines have been cut. And so, a reluctant Eduardo must make the long walk into town on foot. But he doesn’t get very far before returning with the news that the bridge on the lone access road has been washed-out.

Meanwhile, after another “accident” in the crematorium almost kills him, Smith can’t find Elaine and goes on a search and destroy mission to locate her. Again, this was another false alarm since she was just off trying to find something to read. Still on the prod as everyone settles in for the night, Smith stands guard outside Elaine’s room. Inside, the cloaked killer enters using another secret passage, spreading cat ashes all over the sleeping Elaine’s pillow because of … reasons.

But the killer isn’t stealthy enough and Elaine awakens, discovers the ashes, screams and flees, running right into Smith as the attacker slips out the way they came in. These histrionics have woken everyone else up, too, who all also find ashes in their beds except for the noticeably absent Abigail.

Checking in her bedroom they find her hanging from the back of a closet door, victim of an apparent suicide. They also find the cloak and bag of ashes, making Abigail the one who killed Henrietta, they reckon, then faked her own attack, and then tried to scare everyone off.

But after examining the rope and the door, Smith isn’t so sure and is beginning to think both Abigail and Henrietta were murdered. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s will has been changing hands all night, spending most of it with the oblivious Mr. Penny. 

Thus, concluding whoever is in possession of the missing will is the killer, Richard pipes up, saying to Smith that he was the one who initially took it, but then gave it to Myrna to spite his philandering father. But when they check on Myrna, they find her hanging from a closet door in the exact same fashion as Abigail but are able to release her in time. 

Claiming Eduardo did it, the men split-up to flush him out. But while they search, Eduardo circles back to Myrna’s room and demands to know why she’s blaming him for something she did?

Caught, Myrna explains she did it all for the money so Montague wouldn't dump her for Margaret. When Eduardo threatens to expose her, she shoots him with Richard’s gun.

Unfortunately for Elaine, she heard this whole thing. See, she had been examining the rope and noose like Smith demonstrated earlier with Abigail and found that it showed Myrna had actually hanged herself and was prepared to confront her with this evidence but overheard a confession instead.

Caught again, and hearing the men returning, Myrna pistol-whips Elaine and drags her unconscious body into the closet. She then stages the scene for the others, claiming Eduardo was killed in an act of self-defense. (A second bullet for Elaine would’ve ruined the scene.)

Here, as the men remove Eduardo’s body, Myrna asks to be left alone to recover. Once they’re gone, she gathers up the still unconscious Elaine and ducks into another secret passage. Her destination: the crematorium, where she will dispose herself of one last incriminating witness.

Both Broderick Crawford and Basil Rathbone were last minute casting changes for The Black Cat, replacing Richard Carlson and Paul Cavanaugh respectively. Again, Crawford isn’t that terrible in the role of the affable dope, it's just the script does him no favors. Luckily, much better things were in store for him down the road in All the King’s Men (1949).

Speaking of, it’s kind of funny to see Alan Ladd all the way down at the bottom of the bill. (Also minus his customary shoe-lifts.) He was destined to break out the very next year with This Gun for Hire (1942), cementing his tough-guy status for the rest of the decade. When Realart re-released the film in 1947, they cashed-in on this notoriety as Ladd suddenly found himself from 11th to second-billed, right behind Rathbone. The one-sheets even loudly proclaimed "Even Ladd is scared!"

Also, sharp eyes might spot Marlena Dietrich -- if you can recognize her from the back that is. Apparently, she was on a break while filming The Flame of New Orleans (1941) to visit Broderick Crawford, whom she was seeing at the time. Here, Dietrich volunteered to stand-in for Claire Dodd after she had left the studio for the day.

Sadly, Bela Lugosi is only here for name recognition and bogeyman status -- and mostly for his glowing eyeballs at that, as he silently peeps into windows or around corners while constantly eavesdropping on the others, which I think was supposed to be construed as menacing. 

Said Othman, who mistakenly pegged Lugosi as the killer, saying, “The ‘black cat’, an otherwise recognizable Lugosi in a cat-face makeup, will provide the chills as he strangles one victim after another.” But this odd combination of Ygor and Elmer Fudd, while fascinating, kinda short-circuits things a bit.

The rest of the cast is solid enough, with good turns by Gale Sondergaard, Anne Gwynne, and especially Gladys Cooper when we find out Myrna was the killer all along and she cracks up a bit. But Myrna does hold it together long enough to schlep Elaine all the way to the crematorium, where she’s trussed-up and prepped to be stuffed into the oven like a prized turkey.

Meanwhile, in his efforts to find his now missing sweetheart, Smith finally finds an entrance to the secret passage, where he bumps into Mr. Penny, who claims he saw someone headed for the crematorium. But by the time he gets there, he finds Myrna all alone (-- Elaine has already been sealed inside the oven, which hasn’t been turned on -- yet).

Here, Myrna claims she couldn’t sleep and came to the mausoleum to commune with Henrietta. With no reason to disbelieve her, Smith leaves to continue his search, commenting on how the rain is finally letting up. Once he’s gone, Myrna moves to light the gas and dispose of Elaine, when suddenly, Smith bursts back in.

Seems a quarter finally dropped and he wants to know how Myrna got to the crematorium without getting soaked by the rain, meaning she knew about the secret passages all along. (Picked up from her late husband, apparently.) And though the woman claims not to know where Elaine is, they both hear a cat meowing from inside the furnace; the very same black cat that’s been lurking around since the beginning of the film.

Shoving Myrna out of the way, Smith opens the oven door, freeing the cat and pulls Elaine to safety. Meanwhile, Myrna goes for her gun but the cat knocks over a candle, setting her nightgown ablaze, which quickly consumes her as this human fireball runs screaming into the night, bringing our Mystery-Comedy-Horror-Thriller-Melodrama to an end.

Wowsers. Kinda gruesome for a comedy, don’t ya think? 

Now, since the first full body burn captured on film was still a decade away in The Thing from Another World (1951), the man who pulled off that amazing fire gag in The Black Cat was John Fulton, who did both special and optical effects on nearly all of the old Universal Monster Movies from 1930-1950 -- most notably the transparent antics of The Invisible Man (1933), turning men into beasts in Werewolf of London (1935) and The Wolf Man (1941), and, of course, the other, more famous Lugosi and Boris Karloff version of The Black Cat (1934).

He also did a ton of work for Alfred Hitchcock, helping pull off the optical stunt where the real saboteur falls to his death from the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur (1942) and enhancing the Acrophobia in Vertigo (1958) with those amazing zooms down the tower steps. Oh, and he also pitched in on the parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments (1956). 

But aside from Fulton's most memorable, blazing optical, if we’re gonna speak honestly, the real star of The Black Cat is most probably its cinematographer, Stanley Cortez, who wrings a ton of eerie atmosphere out of this thing in spite of the cockamamie script and lackluster direction. 

With some outstanding set-ups and the mesmerizing use of shadows and light in all those secret passages, I especially liked how the hanging bodies were discovered by their silhouettes cast upon the wall. 

The massive sets he got to shoot in and around were equally amazing, too, with the high ceilings, ginormous windows, arches, and long, long hallways, which would later be extensively recycled in Night Monster (1942), The Mummy’s Tomb (1942), The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), and Son of Dracula (1943). 

“The set was eerie,” reported Othman. “Stanly Cortez, brother of Ricardo and one of the town’s good cameramen, had rigged special spirals of metal in front of each spotlight, to cast weird shadows on the walls of a lavish living room.” 

Also of note, apparently, Orson Welles saw this movie and immediately hired Cortez to shoot The Magnificent Andersons (1942) for him. Cortez would also shoot Night of the Hunter (1955) for Charles Laughton, one of the best looking black and white features ever made; and he would later add some juice to the truly wonky The Angry Red Planet (1959), Madmen of Mandoras (1963), The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) and The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966). 

Despite its dubious reputation, the first time I watched The Black Cat I didn’t find it to be all that terrible and fairly amusing in its brief 70-minute run-time. But during each successive viewing, yeah, the seams were showing quite a bit. 

I do like this film well enough, and I cannot stress enough about how gorgeous it looks, but with such a talented and game cast and a ton of clout behind the camera, it’s really too bad the slapped 'n' dashed script sold them all that short.

Originally posted on October 7, 2016 at Micro-Brewed Reviews.

The Black Cat (1941) Universal Pictures / P: Burt Kelly / D: Albert S. Rogell / C: Stanley Cortez / E: Ted J. Kent / M: Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner / S: Broderick Crawford, Anne Gwynne, Basil Rathbone, Hugh Herbert, Gladys Cooper, Gale Sondergaard, Cecilia Loftus, Claire Dodd, John Eldredge, Alan Ladd, Bela Lugosi