This is a creepy horror film plenty of suspense, chills, brutal images and gory events. Being loosely based on the story: "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe. Bizarre things are occurring in a small English village beginning when a man driving a car suddenly encounters a strange black cat in the back seat and through the mesmerizing stare, the cat causes the man to crash his car into a lamp post, killing him. The black cat travels back to its home, a rambling old house occupied by Robert Miles (Patrick Magee), a morbid and hostile former college professor of the supernatural who is reputed to be a medium. Professor Miles lives alone except for his equally hostile black cat, and spends his time making audio tape recordings at the tombs of the recently deceased. Meanwhile, a nosy American photographer named Jill Travers (Mimsy Farmer), ventures into an open crypt to take photographs for her scrapbook when she discovers a small microphone on the floor of the place. She is confronted with rare happenings: people are cruelly murdered and some of them are bitten by a cat and a person (Bruno Corazzari) has a lethal fall. But she doesn't know what a new horror is waiting there . Venturing out, she meets the local police constable Sergeant Wilson (Al Cliver) and later a Scotland Yard detective (David Warbeck) arrives and investigates the series of bizarre deaths in the small English village which are connected to a local literacy professor who lives at an old mansion. When you hear this cat breathing down your neck...Start praying!!!. When the black cat cries...someone dies!.When you hear this cat breathing down your neck... start praying... before you finish your Amen... you're dead!.It purrs. It stalks. It kills. Cat got your tongue? It's still hungry. Flesh Ripping Felines!
Spaghetti splatter-meister Fulci, best known for his unbashed ripoffs: ¨Zombie¨ and ¨Gates of Hell¨, tones down the gore this time in a vaguely Poe-ish tale of a medium with some marbles loose -well played by Patrick Magee- whose kitty provides the temporary habitatfor spirits its master calls up. This is a chilling, eerie Italian terror flick full of screams, thrills , intrigue and lots of blood and guts. Production design is pretty good with a nice setting from a dreary English village. And Sergio Salvatti's downright myopic camerawork is original, adding up an opressive viewing experience, especially with the menacing frames and close-ups of the black cat wandering here and there. . This genuinely frightening story with adequate utilization of images-shock is well photographed on location in Hellfire Caves, West Wycombe, West Wycombe Park, Buckinghamshire, England, UK and Italian studios: Incir De Paolis .The orchestral music by Pino Donaggio (Brian de Palma's usual composer) helps a lot to raise the tension, providing poignant moments and elevating the intrigue to the maximum. It's a decently made Fulci film and better narrated and competently developed than his other flicks. This is a classic excruciatingly horror film in which the intrigue,tension, suspense appears threatening and lurking in every room, corridors , cellar, stable, morgue and many other places. This unrelenting shock-feast packs good make-up and special effects make-up by Paolo Ricci, replacing the ordinary Gianetto De Rossi. It's a an Italian/British co-production, financed on a budget enough by Giulio Sbarigia and as associate producer uncredited Harry Alan Towers.
The motion picture was well realized by one of the most controversial filmmakers of terror movies ,Lucio Fulci. He is a gore-feast expert, making many films in his usual style and peculiar trademarks with flaws and gaps but being professionally made because he is a skilled craftsman . He created strange horror thrillers that managed to be both scary and skilfully made, deserving cult status . Fulci made a lot of movies with full of gory, gruesome, and ghastly feasts in which killers, spectra, Zombies or stumbling stiff dead committed astonishing murders . Reviewers are divided over booth the morals and talents of Fulci (1927-1996) who sometimes directed under the alias ¨Louis Fuller¨. For some critics many of his movies are cruel and shockingly violent, yet their gory surface often conceals religious, social commentaries or intelligent issues. Whether he should be viewed as a cheap sensationalist or just a genius Fulci has a loyal fan base and undeniably has an important and unique influence on the terror genre , creating great works on a low budget such as proved in ¨ The black cat ¨, ¨Manhattan baby¨, ¨Gates of Hell¨, ¨Island of the living dead¨, ¨New York ripper¨ , among them. This is one more imaginative horror pictures in which the camera stalks in sinister style . It's just one long unrelenting guts-feast and passable budget horror movie that still packs a punch for those who like to be terrorized out their wits. Gatto nero(1981) will appeal to Lucio Fulci aficionados.
