31 Days of Horror: Day 8 - Bela Lugosi Double Feature

Before tonight, I was one movie behind, so I made it a double feature of two Edgar Allan Poe adaptations starring Bela Lugosi:  “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1932) and “The Black Cat” (1934).  Neither shares much besides its title with the story that inspired it.  The former reworks the basic elements of the Poe story into a much more entertaining tale involving a mad scientist while the latter takes only the black cat from the original tale and uses it as one of many bizarre elements in a convoluted revenge story. 

In director Robert Florey’s movie, the dead bodies in the Rue Morgue are the products of failed experiments conducted by Dr. Mirakle (Lugosi), who, like Dr. Caligari, has a day job as a carnival showman.  Mirakle’s exhibit features an ape named Erik whose language Mirakle claims to understand and translate for the audience.  He provides a clue to his real work as a mad scientist when he begins talking about evolution and tells his audience he will prove that men and apes share a common ancestor by mixing Erik’s blood with a man’s.       

Poe’s “Rue Morgue” is an engaging detective story ruined by a ridiculous ending revealing that an ape was responsible for the murders; director Robert Florey’s movie is ridiculous from beginning to end, so there’s no reason to complain when a man in a cheesy ape suit makes his appearance.  Florey attempts a bit of early cinematic magic when he alternates close-ups of a monkey and wide shots of the man in the suit.  It’s very unlikely that they ever fooled audiences, but it’s a lot of fun to watch them try.  A final chase scene featuring the ape running over rooftops while an angry mob looks on below is particularly entertaining.

       

I’ve seen several film adaptations of “The Black Cat,” and Edgar G. Ulmer’s is by far the strangest.  Lugosi plays Dr. Werdegrast, a Hungarian soldier who was left to die in the Great War by an Austrian named Engineer Poelzig.  Poelzig, played by Boris Karloff, later built a house on the ruins of the fort where he left Werdegrast.  Werdegrast survived but spent 15 years in prison, and after his release, he seeks out Poelzig to take his revenge.  He also believes that Poelzig killed his wife.  He goes to Poelzig’s house pretending to be visiting his old friend and learns that Poelzig has become a satanic priest and has preserved the bodies of several women, including his wife Karen, through unholy rites.  On his first night in the house, Werdegrast tries to kill Poelzig, but he suffers from a severe phobia of cats, and when a black cat crosses his path, he runs out of the room in fear.  They agree to resolve their differences through more civilized means after Poelzig’s other guests have left, but Poelzig plans to involve them all in a satanic ritual the next night.  All of this happens in just over an hour.

 

As you can probably guess, the movie is a barely comprehensible mess.  I know nothing about its history, but I’m guessing it goes something like this.  Universal had half of two scripts; one was the beginning of a revenge tale and the other was the end of a story about a satanic priest.  Lugosi and Karloff had both signed on to do a movie of “The Black Cat,” but there was no script.  The two half scripts were cobbled together, Werdegrast was given a fear of cats to justify using the title, Lugosi and Karloff were told Universal had a script, the cameras were ready to roll, and the world was better for it.  No early American horror film begins to approach the weirdness of “The Black Cat,” and it’s an utter joy to watch because just as it seems the plot can’t get any stranger or more convoluted, a new layer unfolds, a secret room in the house is revealed, or a preserved body appears.

Tonight's double feature has me eager for more, and the only things stopping me from watching the other three movies in the Bela Lugosi Collection are that it's 4:00 a.m. and I still have papers to grade before class tomorrow.