THE BLACK CAT [1966]

GRITTY.  GRIMY.  SLEAZY.  SLIMY.   

The most low-down film version of Poe I've ever seen.  The leading man and leading lady never made another film and the director only made one other film called SEX AND THE ANIMALS so you know we're in the relative skid row of film making.  I'm not sure if Pluto the black cat ever made another movie either.  In fact, I'm not sure Pluto even made it out of THIS film; although all assurances are that the cat was never hurt during filming.  There are however several scenes in which the cat is treated fairly roughly.  This is why I have such conflicted feeling about this film since I hate it when Pluto is manhandled and tossed around but then love it for it's grimy, queasy fascination.  There something here which is some sort of creative spark which elevates it from the gutter is so happily wallows in.  

Lou and Diana are celebrating their first anniversary in the large mansion they've just inherited at the recent death of Lou's mother.  Lou gives Diana a bracelet for an anniversary present and she gives him a black cat that Lou names Pluto.  Lou is fond of pets as he has an entire room devoted to his many caged animals from capuchin monkey to racoon to toucan.  Oddly, Lou then bids his wife good night and goes to spend his anniversary with Pluto and the rest of the animals while Diana is left to cry herself to sleep.  Here we have the first intimations that Lou ain't quite right as he prefers to spend his anniversary night with his pets and not his wife.  With the help of inheritance money, Lou fancies himself a novelist but gets nowhere and starts to drink heavily.  His behaviour becomes even more erratic and he picks fights in bars and knocks his wife around; causing Diana and the maid to walk out.  Now quite out of it, Lou then gouges out the cat's right eye with a switchblade thinking it's a demon or the spirit of his hated father.  The next morning, Lou is sober and guilty over what he did to the cat.  Diana and the maid return but, still drinking Lou is convinced the cat is his father and strings Pluto up with electrical wire and electrocutes it.  This causes a short which burns down the mansion. 

After discovering the house and contents were not insured, a now broke Lou has a breakdown and is sent to a mental hospital where he is subjected to shock treatments.  Once released, the couple move to a house in the suburbs but Lou eventually relapses and keeps drinking.  One night on a bender, Lou finds a black cat that looks very much like Pluto and brings it home.  Lou eventually relapses into thinking the cat is a returned Pluto who is the spirit of his father and decides to kill it again.  When Diana asks Lou to help her get something from the basement, the cat follows them down and Lou goes after the cat with an axe.  Diana attempts to prevent him for harming the cat and Lou buries the axe in Diana's blonde head.  Lou walls up Diana's corpse behind a brick wall in the basement.  The maid reports Diana missing and the police show up to search Lou's house.  As in Poe's story, the cat is heard meowing from behind the brick wall and the police tear it down discovering Diana's corpse.  Lou runs out to his Jaguar and leads the police in a car chase.  While speeding down the road, a black cat appears in front of him and Lou swerves and dies in a fiery car crash.

Robert Frost is quite good as Lou; depicting his escalating madness without chewing the scenery.  Robyn Baker is good as well as Diana but has considerably less to do.  The best performance in the film is surely Ann McAdams (better known as Annabelle Weenick) as an aging whore Lou meets in a nightclub; her world-weariness and hurt at being constantly buffeted by a cruel world are palpable. Weenick has a long genre pedigree appearing in DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT, ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN, DEADLY BLESSING, CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION, DON'T HANG UP, Larry Buchanan's IT'S ALIVE, CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE and THE TRIAL OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD.  The soundtrack of the film features jazzy music as well as rock & roll.  Scotty McKay and his band play such old rockers as BO DIDDLEY, BROWN-EYED HANDSOME MAN and SINNERMAN.  One beautiful bit of direction occurs right after Lou gouges out Pluto's eye; we cut to McCay and his band rocking the nightclub and each band member is wearing an eye patch over their left eye!  Brilliant! 

THE BLACK CAT was thought to be lost until the late head honcho of Something Weird Video Mike Vraney discovered a print back in 2001.  The film looks even better on the recent Hemisphere Pictures blu ray box set which is where I watched it.