“This bizarre, utterly irrational masterpiece has images that bury themselves in the mind” – The GuardianHorror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi teamed up—and faced off—for the first time in director Edgar G. Ulmer’s macabre Pre-code chiller The Black Cat, which borrows its title (and admittedly not a whole lot else) from Edgar Allan Poe’s tale of terror. Anticipating Rocky Horror by four decades, the film spins a tale of American honeymooners, Joan and Peter Allison, held captive in a creepy mansion against their will. But instead of a transsexual Transylvanian, here it’s Black Mass high priest Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff), who has chosen Joan to be the Devil’s bride. Lugosi co-stars as Poelzig’s frenemy, psychiatrist Dr. Vitus Werdegast, in this singular Universal chiller that features necrophilia, ailurophobia (Lugosi collapses at the sight of a cat), drugs, a deadly game of chess, torture, flaying, and a human sacrifice.
This program also includes the 1941 short, The Tell-Tale Heart. The directorial debut of legendary auteur Jules Dassin (Night and the City, Rififi), this 20-minute scorcher is “positively a-swill in Orson Wellesian tropes: the crouching camera, the chiaroscuro lighting, the mood-deepening use of silences and sound effects” (Richard Corliss).
The full program runs approximately runs approximately 86 minutes.
Event venue
Arkadin Cinema & Bar, 5228 Gravois Ave, St Louis, MO 63116-2310, United States, Southhampton
Tickets
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