The Black Cat

Karloff vs. Lugosi. Need i say more?

Can i at least add that Edgar G. Ulmer is refereeing ? The dismaying duo made eight films together, six of them under the legendary auspices of Universal Pictures in its glory days. The Black Cat is probably the best among them -- the plot gets a little dicey, but its got atmosphere, aesthetics and two of the most charismatic stars in horror film history.

I somehow feel like this film is very dear to Peter Murphy's heart. I have visions of him and Daniel Ash in their art school days, cuddled up in someone's bedsit after band practice, watching The Black Cat on the telly, eating popcorn and drinking absinthe and painting each others' nails black. (I don't know if i can go far enough to conjure up them quarreling over who gets to be Bela like we used to argue over who got to be Kelly Garrett when i was a little girl in the suburbs... Actually, i never got to have that argument: As the blonde, i was automatically Farrah.)

So, we begin with a young couple on their honeymoon in the forests of Eastern Europe. Because that is not asking for trouble. (Oh, Brad! Oh, Janet! Oh, those dumbasses in Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf!) But maybe they're Twitards and are hoping for a vampire honeymoon. There's a knock on their train compartment door and their wishes are granted, as a famous bloodsucker steps across the threshold...

Dammit! We expected that dead-eyed pouty girl whose only personal recommendation is that Joan Jett wanted to fuck her. Or at least that guy who puts lube in his hair. But never you mind, for Bela Lugosi is not a vampire at all! (Please stop and reread this part in your Count von Count voice.) He is actually Dr. Vitus Werdegast, a psychiatrist who is returning home after fifteen years in a Russian prison camp! (Shit, that might be even scarier than coming back from the grave! Go back and read that in the Count von Count voice too.)

So, they get off the train to get on the bus. because you want to be taking a bus through the Carpathian Mountains in the middle of the night. In a torrential downpour. On your honeymoon...

Nope, didn't see any of that coming. We also expected the craggy rock and the gravestones and the need to take shelter in the spooky palace, but not that said spooky palace would be more Chrysler Building than Medieval castle. And it is this palace that will dominate the style of the The Black Cat: Everything is sleek and gorgeous, down to the bedside clocks. The aesthetic is a hybrid of German Expressionism and Streamline Moderne -- asymmetrical angles and skewed perspectives combined with chrome fixtures and glass bricks.

It's more than just the meticulously sleek aesthetic that unifies The Black Cat -- it also has an all-pervasive soundtrack that backs almost all of the actions. It's the best use of Beethoven's Fifth since Demy's Lola, although the "Moonlight" Sonata may be familiar from your favorite TV soap opera....

Things you may not have known about Boris Karloff. One, his real name was Billy Pratt and he was British. Two, so British indeed that he stopped every shoot he was on for four o'clock tea. Three, he was known as an animal lover and much loved by animals, including his pet pig, Violet. Four, not only loved by animals, but loved by the ladies, with Karloff having five (Or was it six? Or seven? No one is quite sure...) wives and widely rumored to be, erm, gifted in the same way as Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle. Five, he helped found the Screen Actors' Guild.

As far as Lugosi... did you know he played Vegas once? In a variety show at the Silver Slipper?

So, anyway, it seems that Lugosi holds a bit of a grudge against Karloff. It seems they were soldiers together in some random Eastern European war. And it seems that Karloff was the commander of their fort and sold Lugosi and 9,999 of his comrades in arms out to the Russians. And it seems Lugosi wound up in that prison camp. And somewhere in there Karloff stole Lugosi's wife. And then Karloff built a luxe moderne mansion on the site of his murderous treachery. Just minor shit that can cause awkwardness between old pals....

Did we mention that he's a devil-worshiper, as revealed by his bedtime reading...

Also, down in Boris' basement, there are a number of women hanging in glass boxes...

One of these ladies in the bias-cut nightgowns and the display case is -- well, was -- Lugosi's wife.You'd think this sight would be Lugosi's cue to off Karloff -- as if that whole traitor/war criminal/Satanist thing wasn't enough. But Lugosi is still hanging around. He makes some noise about waiting for his revenge, to which i can only say: Karloff's gotta sleep sometime. Sure, maybe you've got some kind of operation planned that combines the best effects of a Rube Goldeberg machine and a Jacobean revenger's tragedy. Nice and all but, really: Just kill the motherfucker in his sleep, burn the house down and get on with your life.

They do make some vaguely allusive excuses about Lugosi's obsessive phobia of black cats (the sole nod to the Poe tale that this film is ostensibly based on). He also pronounces that "this place is so undermined with dynamite that the slightest move by any of us could be the destruction of us all." Um, okay. So don't burn the house down. Quick dead-of-night smothering and you're off...

Despite the passivity of the Prince of Darkness, things do accelerate pretty quickly from there. Karloff decides to kidnap Miss Newlywed for his NRFB collection. And maybe she'd also be useful at that demon-summoning shindig he's having Friday night...

Back when people used to really dress for a Satanic ritual.

Oh, and it seems that Karloff has married Lugosi's daughter, who has a great set of hair extensions and seems to be tranq-ed out of her gourd. Bela discovers this, finally snaps and...

Oh, this can't end well....

Suffice to say, vengeance is finally had. Today's torture-porn merchants would make a protracted blood orgy of it, but The Black Cat would do nothing so unimaginative and tacky. Seeing the poised, icy Lugosi go gibbering psycho and the stoic, domineering Karloff weak with fear is enough. Sometimes, when it comes to horror, the old ways are the best. But, of course, we don't have Karloffs or Lugosis to work with anymore either.

As Lugosi himself intones, "Supernatural... perhaps. Bologna... perhaps not."

Dracula's Daughter

Like many horror sequels of the vintage era, Dracula's Daughter has only a tenuous connection to the original film. None of the same actors, not the same director, but it does hold the heavy atmospherics of the first film, here in a sort of glamorous hybrid of art deco and goth. The unique aura makes it unlike most sequels and so does the rather complex main character: The Countess is one of the first, if not the first, sympathetic vampire in movies -- she doesn't want to be a vampire, doesn't want to kill people, even goes to a psychiatrist to try to rid herself of blood lust.

But first we have to put up with some opening dawdling about by some comic-relief British cops and Van Helsing giving a quick explanation of who Dracula is and why he's got a stake through his heart -- Van Helsing is arrested -- if Dracula wasn't a vampire, it's murder.  If Van Helsing insists he was a vampire, Van Helsing is crazy.  Dracula's Daughter isn't a long film, and it's got way too much padding courtesy of various nitwits. Finally, Dracula's daughter -- aka Countess Marya Zaleska -- herself shows up, works some Jedi mind tricks and a hypno-ring and gets hold of Dracula's body. She burns the corpse, with much chanting and exorcising and cross-waving, hoping to break the curse while her enigmatic assistant, Sandor,  looks on.

Except when he flinches from the cross, of course, although that's mostly a wannabe move. Like most vampire assistants, he's doing an internship in hopes of being made a full vampire someday. No promises and only the smallest per diem. I think that's why Renfield wound up eating bugs -- even going to the dirty water hot dog cart, there's no way you can eat lunch within 10 blocks of the Conde Nast building for less than $4 a day. The Countess insists that burning Dracula has freed her, but Sandor isn't so sure. So, while she sits  in her backless evening gown pumping away at the piano and murmuring cheery platitudes (well, cheery for her anyway), he's sitting in the corner getting all negative...

"Twilight... long shadows on the hillsides," tinkle keys, tinkle keys.
"Evil shadows...."
"No, no, peaceful shadows. The flutter of wings in the treetops."
"The wings of bats...." gloats the heavily eyelinered loyal retainer.
"No! No, the wings of birds," tinkle keys, tinkle keys. "From far off, the barking of a dog."
"Barking because there are wolves about..." 

You know, Sandor is pretty defiant for a henchman. What happened to "Yes, master"? And so the Countess finally gives up, puts on her velvet cloak and her hypno-ring and goes out looking for trade... i mean victims. Although one gets the distinct sense that the Countess gets more than a cup o' hemoglobin off of those she selects for drainage. She seems to prefer blondes. But more on that later....

And so this playboy is found the next day, drained of blood through "two sharp punctures over the jugular vein." 

Soon after we meet another psychiatrist and a secretary, Jeffrey and Janet, whom are supposed to be our leads but who aren't quite up the the task. Jeffrey is too much uptight upper lip and Janet crosses the line from spunky and sassy to just plain fucking snotty very quickly. And keeps going.

Our elegant Countess Dracula normally would not give these losers the time of day... well, time of night. But she's a good dinner guest and listens bemusedly to Jeffrey's stories about Van Helsing -- he's been engaged by the defense -- and the joshing about vampires from people with too much upper teeth and not enough chin. ("It seems this fellow Van Helsing shoved a stake through this Dracula fellow's heart.")

She puts up with the idiots and their bragging and sips her tea -- because you know the Countess would "never drink... wine." I feel like this at parties a lot: Sit in the most comfortable chair, half-listen to people babble about bullshit they know little-to-nothing about. Except i'm usually drinking... wine. She comments disdainfully, "Possibly there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your... psychiatry." (The Countess is big on the pause. Her delivery is very Dietrich and, honestly, who would make a better vampire than Marlene Dietrich?) But when Jeffrey begins claiming that "sympathetic therapy can release the mind from any obsession," she begins to think that maybe there's some sort of Freudian/Jungian equivalent of a stake through the psyche that could free her from a life of blood-drinking and signs up for some appointments with the shrink.

Guess which one's the bitch you want to stab? Hint: It's not the vampire.

Of course, she can only meet at night, which means she receives him in another gorgeous, glittering evening gown and annoying Janet throws tantrums makes repeated prank phone calls. Yeah... spunky and adorable. Interestingly, the Countess grasps the idea that vampirism could all be some kind of obsession, some kind of self-mindfuck. Psychiatrist Jeffrey gives her some bullshit advice, thinking she's talking about quitting smoking rather than killing people, and runs off to do something else. As the Countess wonders what to do now, Sandor appears with an ingratiating smile on his face. The Countess announces, "We are going to the studio. Tonight I... paint."

And so begins the most famous bit of Dracula's Daughter, the lesbian seduction scene. Sandor picks up a "model" on the street and brings her to the "studio." Jesus, don't we all know by now that anyone who wants you to go with them to "model" is a serial killer. He takes the world's prettiest and best-groomed homeless girl to the Countess, who gives her a sandwich and makes her move. It's about as subtle as "take your top off and have some wine" can be.

The vampire metaphor usually leans sex -- and, really, it's rather pre-code Hollywood clear in this film that there's more, ahem, activity, than merely bloodless lips pressed to punctured jugular. But in Dracula's Daughter, it feels more like our symbolism is more narcotic-oriented. The Countess tries to feel happy, Sandor reminds her everything is shit, she gets high. The Countess seeks help, it does not happen immediately, she gets high.

Her victim winds up in the hospital with "anemia and amnesia" under the care of Dr. Jeffrey -- wotta coincidence! The Countess simultaneously arrives at his office in yet another sensational ensemble, begging him to "go to the Continent" with her to somehow cure her vampirism. "The Continent." How fucking classy is that? She's like some supervillain cross between Gloria Swanson and Jackie O. that galavants around Europe, wearing couture and drinking the blood of attractive bisexual blondes.

And so, like every Dracula film, they eventually do wind up chasing off to a creepy castle somewhere in Trannsylvania. Gloria Holden does a fine job as the icy, tormented vampire -- repentant, but not pathetic, an exotic woman of the world rather than an underfed ingenue. But, like many films (the recent Conan flick comes to mind) it takes an appealing, interesting lead and constantly shoves them offscreen to feature tedious supporting characters. And, of course, like virtually everything else in the world, the potential and promise of Dracula's Daughter has trickled into bullshit mediocrity. You know what Dracula's daughter is in 2013? A Monster High Doll targeted at eight-year-old girls and a cartoon character voiced by Disney princess Selena Gomez. Curious how one needs to go backwards almost eighty years to Dracula's Daughter to get a mature, complex vampire heroine....