The Black Cat (1989)

I started watching this on a dodgy streaming service expecting to find myself enjoying a re-watch of the Lucio Fulci film of the same title, (I really should pay more attention to the synopses put up for these movies).  What I instead got was Luigi Cozzi's 1989 version of The Black Cat, which turned out to be even more deranged and have even less to do with Edgar Allan Poe's story than Fulci's film.  Ok, so like the Fulci film, there is a black cat wandering around, except that unlike in that film, it has absolutely nothing to do with the plot and its appearances seem pretty much random.  The only rationale for its presence and the title being a character noting that black cats are traditionally believed to be witches in animal form.  The key word here is witches, for this is a film about a mythical witch, (although she never turns into a cat, black or otherwise), who is unwittingly invoked by a film crew planning a movie about her.  Ratther than drawing its inspiration from Poe, Cozzi's film is rather an unofficial sequel to Dario Argento's two films about the 'Three Mothers', a trio of ancient witches, Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), (Argento would finally officially complete the trilogy in 2007 with The Mother of Tears).  Indeed, Argento's name is invoked in The Black Cat (and Suspiria's theme music heard) with the screenwriter claiming that his script is based on the same source as Suspiria: De Quincey's 'Suspiria De Profundis'.  Unfortunately, the witch in question, Levana, clearly isn't in the mood to give script approval and starts making warty faced, green vomit spewing, appearances in the would be leading lady's (also the director's wife) dreams.

While this seems to be setting the film up to be one of those horror films where a long dead witch is resurrected in order to take revenge on those responsible for her demise, being a Cozzi film, it quickly starts going off at tangents, as it clearly isn't revenge that Lavana is after.  Her campaign of terror is firmly focused on the lead actress (Florence Guerin), who she assaults with a series of bizarre dreams and visions, to the point that reality and fantasy become blurred.  Apart from the recurrent image of mirrors smashing to reveal the witch's wart covered face, green vomit being spewed over victims and the like, some of the manifestations are even more bizarre and disturbing because of their sheer banality.  Most notably, the heroine has her broken fridge fixed by a repairman who turns out not to exist, (it turns out that the fridge still isn't working either), while a phantom version of the baby sitter's young cousin turns up (then vanishes) in her baby's room.  Things quickly ramp up though, as a plot rendered ever more confusing by the mixing of dreams and reality, (there are also random shots of the earth seen from the moon, for no explicable reason, punctuating the action and regular intervals), serves us up an affair between the director and another actress (played by Caroline Munro) who is also seeking the lead role, a medium whose stomach explodes after trying to warn the director and screenwriter about something, an undead film producer (Bret Halsey) and his cobwebbed house and lots of murders.  It all culminates with the heroine facing off against Levana as they shoot what look like green laser beams from their hands.  Not to forget that, along the way, it turns out that the heroine is being assisted by a good fairy, seen on a TV screen at one point and whose presence is often accompanied by a shot of what looks like a decaying foetus.

It's all as barmy as it sounds, moved along a at a frenetic pace by Cozzi and accompanied by special effects that look as if they came from an early video game and a thumping metal score.  Does any of it make any sense?  Well, sort of - while much of the imagery is confusing, Levana, in her final manifestation, gives a brief explanation of the plot: she's a mutant possessed of various psychic powers and she is desperate to destroy the heroine because she too is a mutant with similar, latent, powers, who the witch must destroy in order to rule unchallenged.  The rest you have to extrapolate - the fairy could be an embodiment of the heroine's powers for good, although the rotting foetus imagery might imply a twin, or even child, that never developed fully, their spirit lingering in the actress' body.  Virtually everything we've seen - the undead producer, the murders, the phantoms, have been illusions conjured up by Levana too drive the actress mad.  Which still leaves us with the black cat and those space shots - God alone knows what they signify.  God or, more likely, Luigi Cozzi.  In spite of this, The Black Cat is a lot of fun to watch, with Cozzi delivering gross-out deaths and horror set-pieces at regular intervals in order to retain audience interest and stop them from worrying too much about the confusing script.  Despite some very garish lighting, giving many scenes a neon-lit feel, (which, along with a preponderance of dry ice gives some scenes a distinct eighties music video vibe), the film is, in places, quite suspenseful, with plenty of schock scares.  

While Cozzi's direction is effective, if frenetic, he wisely makes no attempt to imitate the directorial style of Argento, two of whose films The Black Cat purports to be a sequel to, with the movie feeling quite different to those films.  There is no real subtlety in the finished film, little in the way of the prefiguring  in earlier scenes of action yet to come characteristic of Argento's giallos, nor the sustained use of colour and sound effects favoured by that director.  While, like Argento, he assaults the audiences senses with visual fireworks and audio effects, Cozzi's direction simply isn't as disciplined as Argento's, opting, ultimately, to throw the kitchen sink at the audience as his film builds to its frenzied climax.  That said, the opening scenes of the film, featuring a gruesome giallo-style murder are revealed to be a film-within-a-film, as they are being shot for the director character's most recent movie, titled The Black Cat, neatly prefiguring the film's subsequent confusion of reality and manufactured illusion.  Moreover, like Argento, Cozzi's film does shift into the surreal, except that, by the denouement, it has toppled over into full blown insanity.  As many have noted, stylistically, The Black Cat has more in common with Lamberto Bava's Demons films than it does Argento's films, with its visceral feel, (indeed, it was marketed in some territories as Demons 6).  In truth, it's best to approach The Black Cat as a stand alone film, ratherthan a pseudo sequel to anything, (at best, it is a homage to Argento's Suspiria rather than a sequel), in order to judge it on its own merits.  While it doesn't bear comparison with Argento's movies, The Black Cat is still an immensely entertaining and outright barmy eighties horror film.