The Black Cat starring Karloff & Lugosi

Rating: 7/10

Acting - 2 stars - Karloff and Lugosi both give great performances. Karloff's performance must be one of the best in his career.
Plot - 2 stars - This movie starts a little slow, but once it gets started, it turns into a very mature horror movie. Not much shock, but a lot of little things that keep you into the movie.
Asthetics - 3 stars - The mansion is very well designed to give it a malevolent mood. The tubes were Karloff stored his dead wives was also designed well.

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This movie, although mostly forgotten, must be one of the greatest horror movies ever. It is one of the rare times that the great horror actors Karloff and Lugosi team up. Karloff gives one of his greatest performances when he plays an evil Satananic Priest while Lugosi plays (get this) THE GOOD GUY! Karloff's portrayel of the Satanist is great, in that it seems purely evil. Karloff did this through great on screen presence, and being able to have a smile that one can tell comes straight from the Devil. Meanwhile, Lugosi's rare performance of the good guy is done very well. Although it does seem unnatural to be rooting for Lugosi's character through the movie, his performance does tell critics that Lugosi did have the ability to play many different types of characters, good and bad. Another thing that makes this movies so great is the design of the mansion in which the movie takes place. With sharp corners, sliding doors, and a futuristic apperance, the setting seems so malevolent.

A bus crash on a lonely Austrian road compels American honeymooners Joan (Wells) and Peter Allison (Manners) to spend the night at the house of Herr Poelzig (Karloff), a sinister looking man who is engaged in an intense death-feud with Dr. Werdegast (Lugosi), whom the couple met on the Orient Express.

Poelzig's attention to Joan compel the couple to pack their bags until they learn they are being held captive. Trapped in the mausoleum-like house, the Allisons discover that Poelzig functions as a high priest at Black Mass, and he has chosen Joan to be the Devil's bride.

Werdegast frees Joan before she can be sacrificed and when Poelzig catches up to them, him and Werdegast engage in a fight. When Werdegast ties up Poelzig, he decides to get even with the priest because he killed the doctor's wife and daughter. He decides to avenge his loved ones by . . . . well . . . . skinning Poelzig alive. The "skinning scene" was done very well. You don't see Poelzig actually being skinned, but instead, the camera turns on the shadow of Werdegast and Poelzig as the doctor skins the priest like a recently shot deer. For a movie 65 years old, that scene is still very chilling.