Universal brought Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi together for the first time in this supposed adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe which, in truth, bears very little resemblance to anything he actually wrote. This would be a recurring theme in the Universal horror series with two further “taking his name in vain adaptations”, The Raven in 1935 and another film titled The Black Cat in 1941. This first borrowing of Poe’s names and basic themes is not only the best of the three but one of the very best of the many genre films that Universal produced during the 1930s and 40s.

Newlyweds Peter (David Manners), a crime novelist, and Joan Alison (Julie Bishop) are on their honeymoon in Hungary when they meet psychiatrist Dr Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi) on the train. Eighteen years earlier, Werdegast had fought in World War I and has spent most of those years in a prison camp in Siberia and is now on his way to visit an old friend, Austrian architect Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). A bus crash strands all three of them near Poelzig’s impressive art deco home which has been built on the ruins of Fort Marmorus, which Poelzig commanded during the war. Once in the house, Werdegast accuses Poelzig of betraying the fort during the war to the Russians, an act of cowardice that caused the deaths of thousands, and of stealing his wife Karen while he was imprisoned. Down in the cellars, Poelzig keeps a strange collection of former lovers, Karen among them, perfectly preserved in upright glass coffins. Poelzig is a Satanist who has since married Werdegast’s daughter, also named Karen (Lucille Lund), and is now planning on sacrificing Joan in a ritual. Werdegast eventually learns of his daughter and suitably enraged, plans to skin Poelzig alive…

The Black Cat was released in the States in May 1934, just a month before the establishment of the Production Code Administration, set up to more rigorously enforce the Motion Picture Production Code that had been laid down in 1930. Had the film been made after June 1934, it would have been a very different and far less interesting film. The freedoms afforded writer Peter Ruric and director Edgar G. Ulmer by those last few months of pre-code Hollywood meant that The Black Cat would be one of the most perverse, most extreme, by the standards of the day, and most challenging of all 30s horror films.  The Satanism plot (Poelzig was inspired by British occultist Aleister Crowley) would almost certainly have been watered down to the point where it no longer mattered very much, the hints of necrophilia detected by some viewers would have been even more oblique than they are now and the psycho-sexual elements (an aroused Poelzig clutches lustily at a naked figurine while watching the Alisons kissing).

Though the more unpleasant aspects of the story are often only hinted at, or take place off screen or in silhouette, The Black Cat is still very strong stuff. It will, inevitably, seem terribly tame by today’s standards but in 1934 this was outrageous stuff and Ulmer, making his first genre film as director, creates some truly striking images that sear themselves into your psyche. The Satanic ritual, filmed on one of art director Charles D. Hall’s gorgeous sets, is a highlight, as is Poelzig’s slow tour of his macabre “museum” in the cellar, his former lovers hovering over him in glass cases as he prowls his domain. And while the flaying of Poelzig of course takes place out of the otherwise all-seeing eye of cinematographer John J. Mescall’s camera, the very fact that it was being implied at all would probably have been unthinkable only months after its release.

The script doesn’t really add up to very much, though Poelzig’s “are we not both the living dead?” is perhaps Universal’s most explicit acknowledgment that the horror film as we’ve come to know it really was born from the horrors of the First World War. There is too a clever little touch of self-referentiality at the fade out when Alison reads a review of his latest book that also serves as a critique of the film itself: “Mr Alison has, in a sense, overstepped the bounds in the matter of credibility. These things could never by the furthest stretch of the imagination actually happen. We could wish that Mr Alison would confine himself to the possible instead of letting his melodramatic imagination run away with him.” Ruric was himself a pulp novelist, signing his crime thrillers Paul Cain.

but the film gets by on its startling visuals and particularly the terrific performances from the two leads. Karloff and Lugosi would be teamed again seven more times (Gift of Gab (1934), The Raven, The Invisible Ray (1936), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Black Friday (1940), You’ll Find Out (1940) and The Body Snatcher (1945)) but this was by far their best teaming. Karloff gives a chilling and very quiet performance while Lugosi it as his best as the passionate Werdegast who turns out to be almost unhinged as Poelzig. In later years, their roles would invariably be reversed (Karloff is definitely the villain here and although Werdegast is morally very questionable, Lugosi notionally plays a “good guy”) and this was a rare opportunity to see a different dynamic that suits them very well. In support, Bishop gets a standard issue female lead with little to do but swoon, look pretty and get rescued, but Manners is far better here than he was in Dracula (1931). Even the comic relief cops (Henry Armetta and Albert Conti) are more tolerable than usual.

The look of the film is unique among the Universal horrors. Mescall’s restless camera adds some vigour to the otherwise quite wordy script. The meander through the “museum” is extraordinary and Hall’s sets are so different to the usual Gothic castles that we were already coming to associate with Universal that the film often feels quite apart from the rest of their genre works. It all adds up to a morbid and melancholic atmosphere that miraculously survived post-production interference by the Universal suits (they were appalled by what Ulmer turned in for their approval), though their meddling did result in the addition of the eerie mausoleum scene just as they toned down some of the more outré character developments (Werdegast was originally a lot crazier than he is here).

The critics still didn’t like it much though the public showed impeccable taste by making it Universal’s most successful film at the box office in 1934. No-one seemed to care much that Poe barely features at all in the script (Werdegast is shown to be terrified of cats, murdering one of Poelzig’s pets while the Satanist continues to carry another black feline around with wherever he goes), instead revelling in the implied sadism, marvelling at the stunning sets and enjoying every second of Karloff and Lugosi’s magnificent performances. Today it’s still a masterpiece and along with James Whale’s The Old Dark House (1932) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) can comfortably lay claim to the title of Universal’s best horror film. It certainly seemed to impress Hammer Films producer Anthony Hinds whose script for The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), signed, as usual, as John Elder, owes a good deal to The Black Cat.