The Black Cat ***½ (1941, Basil Rathbone, Gale Sondergaard, Bela Lugosi Hugh Herbert, Broderick Crawford, Anne Gwynne, Gladys Cooper) – Classic Movie Review 2505

Basil Rathbone, Gale Sondergaard and Bela Lugosi raise the hairs on the back of the neck in the spooky and amusing 1941 comedy-mystery horror movie The Black Cat.

Basil Rathbone, Gale Sondergaard, Bela Lugosi and Gladys Cooper easily raise the hairs on the back of the neck in director Albert S Rogell’s spooky and amusing 1941 comedy-mystery horror movie The Black Cat. However, it is not as good on the comedy front as it is as a chiller. Hugh Herbert and (unusually) Broderick Crawford show the effort involved and have more difficulty in raising the comic temperature.

It is that old Edgar Allan Poe plot about an elderly back-cat-owning reclusive auntie calling her family to her creepy isolated mansion home where, of course, murder leads to murder like night follows day. Also all the other usual things you can think of follow: peals of thunder, cats howling, gun shots, screams in the night and folks using hidden passage-ways. Cecilia Loftus plays the aunt Henrietta Winslow, who lives with her housekeeper and beloved cats, and is supposed to be dying.

So her greedy relatives are waiting for their bequests and gather in anticipation of her death. But it seems one of them is a tad too impatient. Though it is supposed to be a Poe plot, it is highly reminiscent of an Agatha Christie.

As the janitor Eduardo Vigos, Bela Lugosi lurks to breathtaking effect, turning it into an art form, and Gale Sondergaard is superbly sinister as the housekeeper, Abigail Doone. Also in the cast are Anne Gwynne, Claire Dodd, John Eldredge, Erville Alderson, Harry Bradley and Jack Cheatham.

Alan Ladd has a small role as Richard Hartley but he suddenly became a star and then found himself star billed on the posters and advertising – ‘Even Ladd Is Scared!’

Though it is supposedly based on the same 1843 Edgar Allan Poe story, it has no relation to the 1934 Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi film of the same title, The Black Cat, though Lugosi is in both films.

The cast are Basil Rathbone as Montague Hartley, Hugh Herbert as Mr Penny, Broderick Crawford as Hubert “A Gilmore” Smith, Bela Lugosi as Eduardo Vigos, Anne Gwynne as Elaine, Gale Sondergaard as Abigail Doone, Cecilia Loftus as Henrietta Winslow, Claire Dodd as Margaret Gordon, John Eldredge as Stanley Borden, Gladys Cooper as Myrna Hartley, Alan Ladd as Richard Hartley, Erville Alderson as Doctor Williams, Harry Bradley and Jack Cheatham.

The Black Cat runs 70 minutes, is made by Universal Pictures, is distributed by Universal Pictures, is written by Robert Lees, Frederic I Rinaldo, Eric Taylor and Robert Nevill, and is shot by Stanley Cortez.

Release date: 2 May 1941.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,505

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