The Black Cat (1981)

I had a not entirely satisfactory weekend of movie viewing.  My mistake was in watching too many 'modern' films (ie, ones made after 2000), which I rarely find satisfying in the way that I do older stuff.  Even the recent B-horror I saw, which, to be fair, at least tried to do something different in terms of style and approach, felt more like an extended episode of an anthology TV series, (it actually had a very strong resemblance to an episode of The Twilight Zone).  Still, I did fit in my annual viewing of The Longest Day (1962) on Sunday afternoon and caught up with a British comedy of similar vintage that I hadn't seen in years.  All of which brings us, finally, to the subject of this 'Random Movie Trailer', Lucio Fulci's 1981 version of The Black Cat, which I caught up with again after watching a particularly disappointing big budget horror film of very recent vintage.  The Fulci film actually does have slightly more to do with the Poe story than the Luigi Cozzi's later version - for one thing, it actually features a black cat front and centre as one of the main protagonists and someone does end up being walled up alive with the cat, whose cries alert the hero.  As you'd expect from a Fulci horror film, The Black Cat features plenty of bloody and bizarre, murders, all instigated by the titular beast and is full of strange characters and strange goings on which, sort of, make sense.  A lot of it is quite atmospheric and suspenseful but, like most Fulci films, overall it is barking mad.

It's biggest problem is a meandering script which tells its story in such an unfocused way that it often becomes difficult to keep track of exactly what is going on, with characters suddenly appearing, dominating several scenes as if they are about to establish a new sub-plot, then being abruptly killed off.  Consequently, the film has an irregular rhythm and never manages to establish an even pace.   Set in an English village, the film boasts some excellent exterior filming across a number of Buckinghamshire locations, all used to good effect.  It also boasts a strong cast, led by Patrick Magee as a retired academic who hangs out in the graveyard in order to record conversations with the dead and who may or may not have psychic abilities.  He is also the owner of the very hostile black cat of the title, that repeatedly claws him, but is, apparently, also enacting Magee's subconscious hatred of the local villagers in its reign of terror.  The cat, which hypnotises its victims into crashing vehicles and stepping in front of cars, is, it has to be said, a pretty bad actor., sometimes looking as if it is about to fall asleep under the studio lights and quite obviously having had to be bribed with food to perform the simplest tasks for the camera.  I'm afraid that I have never found domestic cats remotely menacing, (they're anybody's friend in exchange for a saucer of milk), so the cat's performance here just undermines the film's central threat even further for me.  Still, David Warbeck, as a motorcycling Scotland Yard man, and Mimsy Farmer, as an American tourist who gets drawn into the plot, are on hand to make up for the weakness of the feline's performance.  Whilst not quite prime Fulci, The Black Cat is hugely enjoyable in a typically, for this director, eccentric way.