The Black Cat (1981)

The Black Cat is a 1981 Lucio Fulci movie and I’m becoming very fond of Fulci’s 80s work.

There have been countless Edgar Allan Poe adaptations but very few have been faithful adaptations, for the obvious reason that apart from one short novel he wrote nothing but short stories. Any film version is going to have to expand those stories considerably. The most effective approach has always been to use a Poe story as the initial inspiration and then build a new story around it. That’s the approach taken here.

We don’t get an initial explanation. We see a series of odd sinister events. People are killed in apparent accidents, but the accidents are puzzling. There is always a particular black cat in the vicinity. He seems to be a bad-tempered cat but of course that does not make him evil. Some cats are just bad-tempered.

We get lots of shots from the cat’s point of view.

The setting is a small village in England. Scotland Yard, in the person of Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck), become involved after the disappearance of two young lovers. They have eloped. The audience knows better. They have met a very unpleasant end.

That’s not the only strange thing going on. The elderly and rather eccentric Professor Robert Miles (Patrick Magee) spends a lot of time in graveyards talking to the dead. He does this in the interests of science. He has various scientific instruments with him. He seems to believe he can contact the dead.

In fact he believes himself to be a medium but he wants to put the process of communicating with the dead on a more scientific footing.

This attracts the interest of an American woman, Jill Trevers (Mimsy Farmer). She’s visiting the village to photograph the ruins.

There are other deaths that seem to be brought about by the cat.

Jill becomes acquainted with the professor and discovers his odd relationship with that feline. He believes the cat intends to kill him. He also believes that while he and the cat hate each other they also need each other. There’s a weird bond between them, and possibly some kind of psychic link.

Jill is convinced that the cat is involved in some way with all those fatal accidents but Inspector Gorley is a straightforward commonsense copper and he doesn’t buy into such nonsense.

The plot may appear to have some holes and some incoherencies but I’m not convinced that is really the case. The business about the professor’s attempts to contact the dead may not be tied in directly to the central plot but it serves a purpose. It establishes that the professor is well-versed in the occult and in fringe areas of science. This makes it plausible that he might have the knowledge, skill and power to forge a psychic link with an animal.

It also adds the suggestion that these strange events may have a supernatural cause or alternatively the explanation may lie in some kind of esoteric science. It adds to the ambiguity.

I do think Fulci was aiming for a degree of ambiguity and that he did not want the link between the professor to be explained by witchcraft or magic. He wanted us to consider more interesting possibilities.

Mimsy Farmer and David Warbeck are perfectly competent in their roles but of course it’s Patrick Magee who dominates the movie. He’s both sinister and strangely frightened. At times he feels in complete control, at other times he feels that events have spiralled completely out of his control. The viewer is not sure if the cat is controlling the professor or if it’s the other way around and maybe the professor is no longer sure either. It’s always great to see Patrick Magee in any movie and it’s even better here seeing him in a starring role.

This is a nicely shot movie that makes good use of the English locations. A picturesque peaceful quaint little English village makes a fine setting for terror and mystery.

The movie has a pretty tenuous connection with Poe’s story but it has a distinctive flavour of its own. It’s by no means conventional gothic horror. The Black Cat is intriguing in its own right and it’s highly recommended.

Arrow have released this movie on DVD and Blu-Ray in a lovely anamorphic transfer with a wealth of extras. The highlight of these is, as you might expect, Stephen Thrower’s informative and perceptive video essay. The Arrow release offers both the Italian and English dubbed versions. In Italian movies of this era it’s pointless worrying about which is the original version - the Italian language versions were post-dubbed as well. In this case most of the key cast members are English speakers are dubbed their own voices so in this case the English version is obviously preferable. And you don’t want to miss out on hearing Patrick Magee delivering his own lines.