黑猫

Title: The Black Cat

Year: 1934

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Adventure, Crime, Horror

Director: Edgar G. Ulmer

Writers: Peter Ruric, Edgar G. Ulmer

Music: Heinz Roemheld

Cinematography: John J. Mescall

Editing: Ray Curtiss

Cast:

Boris Karloff

Bela Lugosi

David Manners

Julie Bishop

Lucille Lund

Egon Brecher

Thamal

Henry Armetta

Albert Conti

Rating: 6.6/10

Title: Detour

Year: 1945

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

Director: Edgar G. Ulmer

Screenwriter: Martin Goldsmith

Music: Leo Erdody

Cinematography: Benjamin H. Kline

Editing: George McGuire

Cast:

Tom Neal

Ann Savage

Edmund MacDonald

Claudia Drake

Pat Gleason

Esther Howard

Tim Ryan

Rating: 7.4/10

A double bill of two most famous films of the erstwhile B-movie auteur Edgar G. Ulmer, THE BLACK CAT is a psychological horror corralling Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi for the first time and DETOUR, made one decade later, is a shimmering film noir of a down-on-the-luck man’s contrite confession.

THE BLACK CAT, Ulmer’s second movie made in Hollywood, sensationalized as “Dracula versus Frankenstein”, was a box office hit for Universal studio. Two icons of horror genre are at loggerheads, Karloff plays Hjalmar Poelzig, a mad Austrian architect who has a morbid propensity of preserving hair-raised cadavers of beautiful women, and Lugosi is Vitus Werdegast, an Austrian doctor who has a vehement phobia of cats, the two were once comrades in arms in WWI, but Werdegast now returns with a vengeance.

The story touches on the horror of warfare, necrophilia, incest, drug-induced hallucination, male rivalry, jealousy and Satanism, but most of which is lost in the silly plot, burdened by grafting two wholesome, nondescript American newlyweds, Peter and Joan Allison (Manners and Bishop, incidentally, the former is another closeted actor in Hollywood) into the foray. And its prefabricated sets of jerrybuilt communicating rooms are too far-fetched to be ‘30s continental vernacular, not to mention Poelzig is supposed to be a famed architect, his dwelling only shrieks otherwise.

If Peter and Joan represents audience’s moral compass, the good doctor/mad architect dichotomy soon gets obscure, there is a faint coloration of perverseness underneath Werdegast’s urbanity which is alarming, why he cannot help stroke Joan’s marcel wave? Is he cut from the same clothes like the sinister Poelzig? Like his undue fear of cats, Werdegast has an unsound mind, ravaged by inexpressible torment during the war, when his sole raison d’être is shattered into smithereens, his undoing is as cut-and-dried as Poelzig’s, sardonically, it is his American ally’s bullet that puts him out of his own misery.

After years of cranking out the so-called “Poverty Row” pictures, Ulmer spits out his contempt of Hollywood in DETOUR, when good girl Sue (Drake) decides “I want to try my luck in Hollywood”, “That’s the most stupid thing I ever heard of.” retorts her boyfriend Al Roberts (Neal). The film is told in media res, with a surly-looking Al recalls his ill-fated cross-country hitchhiker journey to join Sue in L.A..

Basically DETOUR is about a straight-up man’s entire life takes a U-turn after a wrong decision, but by making this decision seem inevitable, we are press-ganged to suspend our disbelief of not one, but two accidental deaths that leave Al the most luckless guy ever (yeah, you are still breathing, at the very least!). As a down-trodden saddo, Al is also a subpar average Joe, regarding the instance when he tries to sell the car, after planning it for half of the journey behind the wheel, he doesn’t know the car’s insurance policy, not even bothers to check the documents left in the glove compartment, so can we take it for granted his confessional screed, his “I’m such a miserable innocent” alibi? Al is a sentimental weakling, those who are prone to take the low road under the pretense that they are left no other options in a cynical world. And for once, a man like him is stripped down to his plenary wretchedness.

Neal has a perfectly befitting hangdog face as the submissive doormat, especially when he is pit against a vituperative Vera (Savage), who is an unqualified femme fatale, but Savage plays her with neither glamor nor coldness, instead, her Vera is full of venom and vim, her rapid-fire dominance and resolute blackmail are phenomenal to behold, as if her sole existence is to dare Neal to murder her, she is anathema, and Savage accomplishes this role with flying colors, are you not menaced by her indefatigable aggression?

Both features run a bit over an hour, tautly structured to hook our attention, and both are made with shoestring budget, what distinguishes is Ulmer’s astute perception of atmosphere and rhythm, THE BLACK CAT has two dueling forces in the center, but so far-off from a conventional grisly fare, what packs a punch is the evil lurking in the shadows, darkness, or even lacuna, like Werdegast’s scalpel piercing through Poelzig’s naked skin, off screen of course, but the psychogenic chills, heightened by the swelling music, are the real deal. As for DETOUR, it has a more cohesive narrative core and produces more resonance in its moralization, while Ulmer’s skillful compositional syntax can be perceived from almost every shot, B-level production, but A-level delectation.

referential entries: James Whale’s THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932, 6.7/10); Erle C. Kenton’s ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932, 6.8/10); Robert Aldrich’s KISS ME DEADLY (1955, 6.2/10); Ida Lupino's THE HITCH-HIKER (1953, 7.0/10).