The Black Cat (1934)
★★½ — The Black Cat (1934)
Edgar G. Ulmer directed this 65-minute Universal horror on a budget of under $100,000, yet it turned out to be one of the studio's most profitable releases of 1934, more than doubling its money. Ulmer, a European émigré who had trained under F.W. Murnau and worked in German Expressionist theatre, brought a visual sensibility well above what the budget suggested. The film carries a Poe title but almost nothing of his story, using the name largely as a marketing hook during Universal's monster-cycle boom years of the early 1930s. The real draw was the first screen pairing of Karloff and Lugosi, both fresh from their respective star-making turns in Frankenstein and Dracula, and Universal marketed the combination heavily. Ulmer would spend most of the rest of his career working in Poverty Row, making this one of his few major-studio credits.
The Black Cat (1934) holds a curious place in horror history, not for being particularly good, but for being the first on-screen pairing of legends Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer with striking Art Deco flair, the film oozes atmosphere: sleek modernist sets, shadow-drenched corridors, and a genuinely unsettling undercurrent of Satanism and wartime trauma. For brief stretches, the tension crackles. But atmosphere alone can't sustain a film with such a muddled plot. What begins as a psychological thriller veers into melodrama, occult ritual, and abrupt violence without ever cohering into a satisfying whole. The pacing lurches, the romantic subplot feels tacked-on, and despite the star power, neither actor is given enough to do beyond posturing. A stylish curio that horror completists should see once for its historical novelty and visual elegance. But don't expect a masterpiece. Two icons sharing the screen should've added up to more than the sum of its parts. Here, it's merely a footnote, creepy in patches, forgettable overall.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 1934 | Watched: 2026-03-27
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More from Edgar G. Ulmer: People on Sunday (1930) · Detour (1945) · Bluebeard (1944)
More with Boris Karloff: The Old Dark House (1932) · The Mummy (1932)
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