The Black Cat (1934) on Netflix
NR19341h 5mAdventureCrimeHorror
Honeymooning in Hungary, Peter Alison and his wife Joan take Dr. Vitus Werdegast into their train compartment. A bus crash in the rain leaves Joan hurt.
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- Netflix2.5/5
- IMDb6.9/1014,599 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Peter Alison, an American mystery novelist, and his wife Joan are honeymooning in Hungary. A seating mix-up puts the psychiatrist Dr. Vitus Werdegast in their train compartment. Werdegast was away from home for eighteen years, fifteen of them in a prison camp in Siberia, and has not seen his wife in that time. In heavy rain their bus runs off the road near the house of the architect Hjalmar Poelzig. The driver is killed and Joan is hurt. Thamal, Werdegast's servant, carries her to the house while Werdegast and Peter bring the bags.
Cast
- Albert Polletas Waiter (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Black Cat (1934)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Although the film credits Edgar Allan Poe's story as its source, The Black Cat has little to do with his 1843 tale: director Edgar G. Ulmer and pulp writer Peter Ruric invented the plot themselves, tapping a sudden public interest in psychiatry.
- The character of Hjalmar Poelzig drew on the life of occultist Aleister Crowley, and his surname came from architect Hans Poelzig, whom director Edgar G. Ulmer claimed to have worked with on the sets of The Golem (1920).
- A score of excerpts from classical pieces by Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Chopin and others runs through nearly 80% of The Black Cat; Heinz Roemheld compiled the soundtrack.
- The Black Cat was the first of eight films to star both Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi; six of the eight were produced by Universal.
- The Black Cat helped create and popularize the psychological horror subgenre, using atmosphere, eerie sounds and emotions like fear and guilt, rather than gore, to deliver its scares.
- Werdegast's line "Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not." turns up in the Monkees' 1968 film Head and its soundtrack album, in Sinbad's 1990 comedy special Brain Damaged, and in Deee-Lite's 1990 song "E.S.P."
