O Gato Negro

Old lady gathers her greedy relatives in her gloomy isolated mansion for a reading of her will. Not long after, she winds up dead. Welcome to an old dark house thriller, friends. Yes, it's fairly repetitive of many other such thrillers or comedies but it's pretty entertaining at times. It has an excellent cast, most of which unfortunately have little to do. Broderick Crawford stars in an early role. He's equal parts leading man and buffoon. The kind of part Wayne Morris would have been playing over at WB. Bela Lugosi has a small, thankless part. He spends most of the movie ominously lurking in the shadows and peering in windows. Hugh Herbert provides the movie's comic relief. For the uninitiated that means he fidgets and talks to himself, punctuating every other sentence with "woo hoo." It's not very funny but I found it harmless enough. Maybe I'm just used to Herbert by now. Others may find him irritating so be warned. The rest of the cast includes Basil Rathbone, Gale Sondergaard, Anne Gwynne, Gladys Cooper, and Alan Ladd before he made it big. I agree with another reviewer that this probably would have worked better as an Abbott & Costello movie. Despite the relatively short runtime, it begins to feel overlong as it nears the hour mark. It's enjoyable enough but flawed. Still, anything Universal was putting out in the horror/thriller field in the 1940s was worth watching.

This is a fairly typical old dark house comedy of the sort that was popular in the wake of the Bob Hope Cat and the Canary of a couple of years earlier. Gale Sondergaard is even on hand, as in the earlier film; and this one, while hardly brilliant, has some wonderful photography and great (and exceedingly familiar) standing sets. It's a routine reading of the will plot, with the usual suspects, here more lively than usual, with Runyon refugee Broderick Crawford, Gold Diggers alumnus Hugh Herbert, deerstalker- and meerschaum-less Basil Rathbone, and a sadly defanged Bela Lugosi, in a minor role. If one goes for old-fashioned studio thrillers and isn't too demanding of dialog, which is far from clever, or plot, which isn't too ingenious, this one might be just what the doctor ordered on a dark and rainy night.

That isn't saying that The Black Cat is a bad film, in fact to me it's pretty good. Just that considering the cast and idea it could have been better than it was.

What did let The Black Cat down in particular is Hugh Herbert, whose comedy was always an acquired taste(not a fan personally to be honest) but here he is very over-utilised and really got on my nerves. Bela Lugosi despite looking appropriately ghoulish(that ghoulish close-up is the most memorable his performance gets) and does a good job with his screen time but is wasted, not just because he doesn't have much to do but also his material is not an awful lot to write home about. The film really drags in the middle and not all the script works. The mystery parts are great and Crawford's quip to Rathbone was a delight but parts are a little melodramatic and the comedy with Herbert was like Herbert himself, more annoying than funny.

The Black Cat looks great though, it's very elegantly photographed and the sets/scenery are beautiful and creepy. The music is a little intrusive in places but it's effectively eerie and has a lot of energy as well. The mystery while having pacing issues in the middle is very compelling and suspenseful mostly, with a truly gripping ending that took me completely by surprise. The direction is never too flashy or simplistic and most of the acting is just. Gale Sondergaard is effectively mysterious and the personification of elegance, while Alan Ladd before he made it big plays it straight and more than decently and Gladys Cooper brings bags of class to her role. Broderick Crawford is likable and a lot of fun, his material works far better than Herbert's and he's much better used. Basil Rathbone does his usual solid job in a role that suits him very well and Anne Gwynne is sympathetic and not bland.

All in all, pretty good but could have been great considering the cast. 6/10 Bethany Cox

Hoping that wealthy, cat-loving matriarch, Henrietta Winslow (Cecilia Loftus) lies near death, her greedy relatives, led by the snobby Montague Hartley (Basil Rathbone), gather at her mansion for the imminent reading of the will. Vexing them all, the old woman lives, and decides to read them her will anyway. Henrietta soon meets with a terrible "accident", and the homicidal hellishness commences.

THE BLACK CAT is another "old dark house" mystery / comedy set in a gargantuan estate, complete with secret passages and a kitty crematorium! The obligatory thunderstorm arrives just in time for the perfect evening. Stars Broderick Crawford as the kindly Hubert Smith, Gale Sondergaard as the intimidating housekeeper, Abigail, and Bela Lugosi as the lurking groundskeeper, Eduardo.

A fun, fiendish film with a nice twist in its tale!...

The housekeeper's name (Gale Sondergaard) was "Abigail Doone".

Review: Even tho' this is a Great film, the first person to be murdered should've been Hugh Herbert! With his presence, this film can't decide whether it's a mystery trying to be a comedy, or vice-versa. It's STILL a great, spooky film, tho! Norm Vogel