Satanic Madmen: Hjalmer Poelzig

I can’t pronounce it either. But Bela Lugosi can. Listening to Lugosi’s fractured English in a non-Dracula role is one of the joys of this 1934 Universal horror film, especially when he intones the classic line, “Supernatural perhaps – baloney, perhaps not.”

The Black Cat owes next to nothing to the Edgar Allan Poe story from which it draws its title, yet somehow manages to capture the essence of Poe in its strange tale of obsession, paranoia, and revenge.

During a raging storm (is there any other kind?), Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi) and a hapless American couple who are his traveling companions to Visegrad, find themselves seeking shelter at the home of Werdegast’s arch enemy, the architect Hjalmer Poelzig (Karloff) who made off with Werdegast’s wife while Werdegast was in a prison camp for the past fifteen years. The minute we lay eyes on Poelzig we know this guy is up to no good…in a bad, bad way. I mean, look at that haircut, guyliner, and lipstick. Eww.

Under Edgar Ulmer’s script and direction, Poelzig is as serious a diabolic madman as has ever been put on film. Poelzig’s house is a modern expressionistic nightmare perched atop the ruins of Fort Marmorus which he had commanded during the war, an army which he ultimately betrayed to the Russians causing the death of thousands of Hungarian soldiers. Poelzig lives on top of the graveyard of the soldiers he led into death.

If that isn’t evil enough, wait till you get a load of the former wives and lovers he keeps in suspended animation, displayed in glass boxes which he likes to view while stroking the titular feline. You call that a collection? I call it fifty shades of necrophilia. You don’t think he just looks at them do you?

Werdegast is no slouch himself in the weirdo department. Though his characters is the protagonist, his performance is laced with menace, fear, lust, and a thirst for revenge involving a scalpel. Early in the film he engages in some inappropriate touching of the young bride of his traveling companion, a gesture so creepy and pervy it makes me wonder how it made it past the Hollywood censors. According to the events surrounding the film’s production as detailed at 366 Weird Movies, The Black Cat was heavily edited before its release. Most of the old Universal monster films leave us with a sense of fun. This one makes me want to take a shower after I’ve watched it.

The plot is occasionally hard to follow which may be due to these edits. Nevertheless, things build to a devilish climax when it becomes clear Poelzig and his disciples are about to celebrate the Rites of Lucifer and he intends to sacrifice the innocent American bride. The ritual room is good stuff, complete with socialites in black cowled robes, Poelzig sporting a pentagram amulet, and a piece of set decoration that looks suspiciously like an inverted cross. Strong stuff in 1934, it still has hypnotic power over the viewer today. 

If your ideas of Karloff and Lugosi begin and end with Frankenstein and Dracula, prepare yourself for a truly bizarre Gothic thriller. The Black Cat is available on DVD in The Bela Lugosi Collection along with other lesser known Universal horror films The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Invisible Ray, and Black Friday.

When the Autumn Moon is Bright: The Tragedy of Lawrence Talbot

Like a lot of horror fans of my generation, one of my earliest exposures to Gothic Horror was through the classic Universal monster films. For kids growing up in the 1960s, the monsters were readily available on Saturday afternoon TV shows and were routinely trotted out for double and triple features at local theaters and drive-ins at Halloween. We went to the movies, waited impatiently for them to show up on horror shows on TV, bought Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and assembled Aurora model kits.

Today, it’s easy to see the allure of these old movies. The wizardry of combining studio sets and matte paintings was revolutionary in the 1930s, the stories mesmerizing in their power of suggestion, and the actors, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and others, delivered some of the best performances ever committed to film. To me, Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster compares to Brando’s Don Corleon as one of the greatest performances of the 20^th Century.

I can’t say the same for Lon Chaney, Jr. His name is as well known as those of Lugosi and Karloff, but his acting is clumsy and awkward. Which is exactly what makes his reading of Larry Talbot so poignant. Larry Talbot is the 1940s equivalent of the All American Guy. He is Everyman, horror filmdom’s Henry Fonda. He’s a loveable schmuck who snitched apples when he was a kid, is handy with tools, and a snappy dresser. Girls go crazy for a sharp dressed man, and in The Wolf Man (1941), Talbot gets not one, but two… the alluring Gwen Conliff and her good-times gal pal Jenny Williams.

If Chaney was a second rate actor, what makes The Wolf Man my all time top favorite of the Universal Monsters franchise? Bela Lugosi’s Dracula is at once dreadfully seductive and horrifying in his ruthless desire for human blood. Karloff’s Monster is an unloved child with an abnormal brain. He has no sense of right or wrong. When it is time to kill, he kills without remorse. But what happens to Larry Talbot could happen to anybody. His tragedy is as much bad luck as is being struck down by cancer or being killed by a drunk driver. And who better to represent this sort of hapless victim of circumstances than a loveable lug, a bumbling, happy-go-lucky Everyman?

While Universal’s The Wolfman (2010) remake scores high on the Gothic Eye Candy scale, the character as written, and Benicio  del Toro’s lifeless performance of Larry Talbot, are one of the movie’s many shortcomings. The script is more or less the same with a bit of visceral updating, but here Talbot has more of a cynical edge, as is evident in the opening scenes showing Talbot backstage after a performance of Hamlet. (Here he is an actor, not a mechanic who works on astronomy equipment.) It’s well documented that del Toro is a huge fan of the original film and was eager to play the part, which leaves me curious why he would turn in such an uninspired performance.

I enjoy watching the 2010 remake. It’s not uncommon for me to watch both films back to back. While the early version presents a more precise story and is single handedly responsible for creating a specific mythology that carries on in werewolf stories to this day, the remake excels on the production values, from the location shots of Chatsworh House standing in for Talbot Hall, to the misty woods and the Victorian interiors bathed in dusty shafts of filtered sunlight. Some days I can’t get enough eye-candy, and both movies deliver in spades.

The good news is that, while the 2010 version under performed (with good reason) at the box office, Universal realized they were onto something, and in 2011 announced that they would reboot the story, meaning they would return to the 1941 source film rather than create a direct sequel to the 2010 film.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t resist returning to the misty, gypsy infested forests surrounding the Talbot estate… especially when the autumn moon is bright.