The Black Cat (1934) & The Old Dark House (1932)
One night in a movie palace watching two classic horrors.
In October of 2007 I was graced with an opportunity to step back in time. Thanks to the wonderful group of volunteers at the Loew’s Jersey Theater in Jersey City, New Jersey, those who attended the Boris Karloff Film Festival the weekend before Halloween 2007 were taken back to the 1930s. I was delighted to see two great Universal Horror classics on the big screen and renew my love for these two great cinematic horrors.
The Loew’s Jersey Theater was opened in September of 1929. The first film shown at the theater was Lionel Barrymore’s Madame X, a film that went on to receive two Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Actress. The Loew’s Jersey Theater is what’s known as a Movie Palace, to which my generation was exposed mainly via film and television. They were created to serve as an escape for the working class, a place where people can go to relax and enjoy an evening out in luxury. The architecture of many of these theaters were often inspired by European royal palaces. The Loew’s Jersey Theater was built to resemble a European Opera house. Greeting you as you enter the lobby of the theater is a beautiful chandelier made of Czechoslovakian Crystal and reportedly cost over $50,000 to make in 1929 (about $897,000 today). Towards the back, behind all the towering columns is the lavish Grand Staircase, leading to the balcony. Everything but the balcony had been wonderfully restored by the volunteers.
In the lobby, the concession stand was selling boxes of popcorn and cans of soda for merely a dollar a piece, but the real treats for me were in the back of the lobby. On loan to the theater from a private collector were the original theatrical posters for The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Old Dark House. Also displayed under glass were several magazines and comic books whose covers were graced by the face of the man we were all there to see… KARLOFF!
Just a few short steps away, one would find a special treat left behind by theater-goers from nearly a century ago. Candy wrappers and boxes from the 1920s through the 1950s all displayed under glass, inadvertently leaving us with a time capsule rescued from the heating ducts. After a few minutes, we entered the theater. The size and space is unparalleled. This one theater could seat well over a thousand. Unfortunately, most of my pictures from inside the theater were too dark to be seen.
As an added treat for this program, the theater had painstakingly restored the “Wonder Morton” theater organ, played for an audience for the first time in over 40 years. This served as a wonderful overture to The Black Cat.
This 1934 masterpiece, directed by Edgar Ulmer, is not one of the titles that rushes immediately to mind when one mentions the Universal Horrors, but with such titles as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Wolf Man in Universal’s vast catalog one can understand why. But don’t let the unfamiliarity fool you, this film is definitely worth a look. This film may be the most stylish of Universal’s 1930s horror output not only due to Ulmer‘s background as an art director, but also the European flavor the Austrian-born Ulmer brought, which influenced every phase of the production. “My father loved The Bauhaus. The set design of that house is definitely the Bauhaus,” says Ulmer’s daughter Arianne Ulmer Cipes, “plus the fact that he wanted to give it the German expressionistic [sic] design and look, the shadow and light.” It didn’t stop there, however, as even Karloff’s character’s name and characteristics were based on German cinematic icons. The surname Poelzig was a reference to Der Golem art director Hans Poelzig, and his sadistic nature was said to be based on the reputation of legendary director Fritz Lang.
On a historical note, this film was Universal’s first ever attempt to team its’ two main horror stars, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. (Interesting side note: Until the discovery of a print of the 1932 comedy Gift of Gab, this was believed to be the first ever team up of these two giants of the genre).
Often criticized for its’ confusing plot, the story of how this film came to be is as convoluted as the screenplay itself and the fate of the auteur of the piece is almost as tragic as the tale itself. Following the flop of Universal’s last Poe-inspired outing, 1932’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, several variations The Black Cat, which were commissioned prior to Murders, were rejected by studio brass. The first such variation was called The Brain Never Dies written by Stanley Bergman and Jack Cunningham. The second version was to star Boris Karloff, and while it stayed closer to the original Poe tale it also included plot elements from Poe’s THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. The following attempt would combine THE BLACK CAT with the story THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. Ultimately, it took Ulmer’s relationship with Carl Laemmle Jr. combined with his desire to create his own version of the film to finally get the production green-lit.
Ulmer had a fascination, with what his wife called “man’s dark side”, that seemed to stem from his days working as an assistant to FW Murnau on such films as NOSFERATU and FAUST, so it came as no surprise that this film was a heavy piece combining elements of the first three screenplay incarnations with the newsworthy exploits of Alistair Crowley.
Conflicting reports have the screenplay listed as having been completed on either the 17th or 19th of February in 1934. The Studio had once again found itself in dire straits and since this production was relatively cheap at a $91,125 estimated budget (about $2,000,000 today), production was set to commence immediately on February 24.
Due to circumstances that would take the elder Laemmle to Europe and Laemmle Jr. to New York, the film began production before the script could be thoroughly examined. The resulting film was a censor’s nightmare, involving Satanism, torture, incest, revenge and a character being skinned alive. The film wrapped on March 17, one day over schedule, and was ordered to undergo re-shoots on March 24, 25, and 26 to remove some of the film’s more “unsavory” touches.
Upon its release, the film was loved by audiences and savaged by critics, but it was financially successful. Ulmer, who came to America in 1923 or 1925, depending on the sources, had worked on the Universal lot for much of the 1920s as an Art Director before directing a handful of two reel B Westerns. Growing tired of being stuck in the same position, he briefly returned to Europe in 1929, but was back in the United States and working for MGM by 1930. He returned to Universal and his rapport with Carl Laemmle Jr. led to a reversal of fortune. Following THE BLACK CAT, Ulmer was to direct Karloff once again in BLUEBEARD. This film would not be made until a decade later when “poverty row” studio Producers’ Releasing Corp. (PRC) green-lit the project for Ulmer. The film also lacked the star power of Boris Karloff in the title role, but is widely hailed as a classic due to the performance by Shakespearian actor and future horror film icon John Carradine, whose head briefly appears in THE BLACK CAT as the organist during the Satanic ceremony.
How could Ulmer’s career take such a swan dive? How could he go from making pictures for Universal to the studio considered to be the bottom rung, even of Poverty Row? Laemmle Jr. wasn’t the only person at Universal impressed with Ulmer. During the production of THE BLACK CAT, Shirley Alexander, the wife of Carl Laemmle Sr.’s nephew Max Alexander, and Ulmer had begun an affair and soon after, Shirley left her husband and married Ulmer. Ulmer was shortly thereafter blacklisted and relegated to working on shoestring budgets at low level studios like PRC.
In subsequent years, he would direct films some hailed as masterpieces (BLUEBEARD and DETOUR) and others dismissed as cheap schlock (DAUGHTER OF DR. JEKYLL and THE MAN FROM PLANET X). He would earn the nickname “The Miracle Man of Poverty Row” and remains one of the few reasons (along with Lugosi) that PRC is even remembered as a footnote in cinema history. Ulmer’s marriage to Shirley would last until his death in 1972. Shirley passed away in 2000. She never remarried.
As for the film itself, THE BLACK CAT is now regarded in many circles as a masterpiece. It was even a favorite of Bela Lugosi. Rumor has it that Lugosi, tired of being typecast as a villain, asked that his character be sympathetic and that he was given the role of Werdegast as some form of appeasement. The fact that the screenplay was completed on February 17th or 19th and that Lugosi was in New York until the 15th, makes this story seem very implausible. The other factor that challenges this rumor is that Lugosi’s stock had fallen so significantly since turning down the title role in 1931’s FRANKENSTEIN and the subsequent commercial failure of MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, that it is unlikely that Universal would cater to any of Lugosi’s whims.
Lugosi’s value to Universal was evident in the payroll of this film. Lugosi’s co-star Boris Karloff would receive $7,500 as salary for this film while Bela made a paltry (in comparison) $1,000. Lugosi’s Dracula co-star David Manners, by no means a star on Lugosi’s level, even made more than Lugosi at $1,250. Despite this, Bela was said to have been uncharacteristically upbeat during the production of this film. According to an interview with Shirley Ulmer, he was constantly telling jokes and exhibited a jovial mood throughout the 15 day shoot. It is even said that in 1955, during a theatrical revival of the film in California, Lugosi had stood up in the audience and proclaimed “What a handsome bastard I was!” Unfortunately for Bela, proud moments would be few and far between during the remainder of his career. Like Ulmer in the 1940s, Lugosi fell on hard times and was relegated to starring in poverty row films such as PRC’s THE DEVIL BAT and Monogram’s THE APE MAN.
Lugosi plays Dr. Vitus Werdergast, a once prominent psychiatrist, who had been a POW in a Siberian prison for fifteen years following the first World War. On the Orient Express, he shares a car with the honeymooning couple, the Allisons, Peter (David Manners) and Joan (Julie Bishop). Werdegast reveals that he is on his way to see an old “friend” he hasn’t seen since the war. A bus crash would bring all three to the home of Werdegast’s “friend,” renowned engineer and architect Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff). The home was built on the site of Fort Marmorus, where Werdesgast served under Poelzig during the war, and is dripping with the aura of death. At one point, while Peter Allison is looking to leave the home, Peolzig’s car is revealed to be in disrepair, and while attempting to call for a cab, learns the phone is dead. This leads to Poelzig commenting to Werdegast, “The phone is dead, Vitus. Even the phone is dead.”
The tension between Werdergast and Poelzig is obvious from the very beginning. While Werdergast was stuck in a soul-crushing military prison, Poelzig had married Werdergast’s wife after convincing her that her husband had died in the war. After eighteen years (fifteen in prison and three searching for answers), Werdegast has come back to reclaim his wife and daughter, unaware that his wife has since died and is encased in a glass tomb in the mausoleum in Poelzig’s home to preserve her beauty, on display as though in some macabre museum. The following morning, the Allisons’ attempts to leave are thwarted by Poelzig, who now has designs on Joan. Werdergast soon learns that following his wife’s death, Poelzig married Werdergast’s daughter, Karen.
What would follow is a graphic, (for the time), film featuring a chess match to determine the fate of the Allisons, a Satanic ceremony, sadism, and most grotesque of all, a man being skinned alive. Keep in mind that this is the version with the “unsavory” parts removed! It’s easy to see why the executives at Universal were uncomfortable with this film. So what became of the footage deemed too vile and extreme for the depression-era audiences? There were rumors in the 1980s about some of the uncensored scenes still surviving in the Universal vault, but as of this writing in 2024, they still have not come to light. Some historians maintain that the footage never existed to begin with. Unfortunately, we may never know.
The print used for this screening was a beautifully crisp one provided by the Library of Congress. While it definitely shows its age in some places, it is for the most part, wonderfully restored.
Following the brief intermission, we were treated to the Betty Boop cartoon short “The Old Man of the Mountain,” and Boo!, a 1932 montage of classic monster clips that is most notable today for containing the only surviving footage from the lost 1930 film The Cat Creeps. Soon the “Wonder Morton” played again as we were set to enter James Whale’s Old Dark House.
The story behind Old Dark House is far less sordid than that of The Black Cat, but not without historical interest. In 1932, Universal was riding high off the success of both of its’ previous horror outings Dracula and Frankenstein. Pre-Production on Old Dark House began in January of 1932 (it wasn’t until late February that Universal would see its’ first horror box office failure with Murders in the Rue Morgue). Though director James Whale’s previous film, The Impatient Maiden, was seen as a misstep by both the Studio and the director, Whale still wielded quite a bit of influence with the heads at Universal. The studio wanted Whale to return to his horror roots while Whale wanted a more personal project than the superficial Maiden. An adaptation of J.B. Priestley’s Benighted (filmed as Old Dark House to capitalize on the horror boom) was a happy medium. For the screenplay, the studio hired playwright Benn W. Levy and R.C. Sheriff. The cast was decided mainly by Whale, but Universal had one demand, the star of the picture must be the hottest property in the horror game, Boris Karloff.
Karloff is given top-billing for his role as Morgan, the brutish and violent deaf-mute butler. The rest of the cast would be rounded out by Raymond Massey (who would famously go on to portray Jonathan Brewster in Frank Capra’s film adaptation of Arsenic and Old Lace, and was the subject of the meta dialogue that says he looks like Boris Karloff) and Gloria Stuart (who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1996 for her role in James Cameron’s Titanic) as the Wavertons and a cast of British stage performers including Charles Laughton, starring in his first Hollywood feature film. Also of note in the cast are Melvyn Douglas, who went on to win two Academy Awards (for his supporting roles in 1964’s Hud and 1980’s Being There), and Ernest Thesiger, who is best known to Universal horror fans as Doctor Pretorius in James Whale’s 1935 masterpiece, The Bride of Frankenstein.
Whale was given nearly 100% creative freedom with the film and he worked in all aspects of it. The sets designed by Charles D. Hall went on to be used and modified for many horror films throughout the 1930s. The production came and went with no major problems and the film opened to mostly positive critical notices. Financially, the film was successful enough to warrant a re-release in the 1940s. Soon after, it seemed to vanish.
In the 1960s, Curtis Harrington, director of many classic Made-For-TV horror films and a close personal friend of James Whale, began an exhaustive search for a print of the “lost” classic. Universal had destroyed the negative after the rights to the story reverted back to J.B. Priestley. In the early 1960s, Priestly had optioned the novel to Columbia Pictures for a remake to be co-produced with Britain’s esteemed horror studio Hammer Films and to be directed by legendary b movie director William Castle. Harrington asked Castle about the film and Castle said that not only did he not own a copy, Universal could not supply him with one when he inquired.
Undaunted, Harrington continued his search and finally convinced Universal to search the vaults for a print. In 1968, the search was finally over. A neglected fine grain print was found in Universal’s possession. Restoration was necessary and Universal refused to foot the bill since they would be unable to profit from it. Eastman House of Rochester, New York provided Harrington with the $3,000 necessary to restore the film and it was revived in theaters for a brief run that was met with mostly negative reviews. It seems that the expectations could not be matched by this melodramatic send-up of the horror genre. The film has since become known as a classic of 1930s horror cinema and is today considered among the finest genre films Universal made in that period.
Based on J.B. Priestley’s novel “Benighted,” James Whale was said to “revel” working in the style of Paul Leni. According to screenwriter, author, and personal friend of James Whale, Gavin Lambert, Whale often spoke reverently of both Paul Leni and his 1927 silent masterpiece, The Cat and the Canary. With its use of long dark hallways, billowing curtains, and a menacing hand that appears from out of frame to threaten the protagonists, one could see how the film was very influential to Whale’s work on Old Dark House. Gloria Stuart, speaking on how hands-on Whale was while working on this film, states that the director was “very meticulous,” down to making sure that “every morning the props had to be exactly right.”
His attention to detail paid off, and The Old Dark House became a trendsetter. The title itself became eponymous for this particular sub-genre for many decades to come. It is also here that the viewer begins to get a feel for the macabre and perverse sense of humor that Whale would bring to 1933’s The Invisible Man, and to its’ crescendo in 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein.
After nearly being crushed in a landslide during a violent rainstorm, Philip and Margaret Waverton (played by Whale favorites Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart) along with Roger Penderel (the great Melvyn Douglas), seek refuge in the first house they see, unaware that an even greater danger lurks inside. The titular “old dark house” is that of Horace Femm and his partially deaf sister Rebecca, who live with a dark secret that they dare not speak of. Upon arrival at the door, the group is met by Morgan, the brutish mute butler of the Femms. After explaining their troubles, Morgan grunts and closes the door before opening it seconds later to let them in. It is here that we meet Horace Femm, played to eccentric perfection by another James Whale regular, Ernest Thesiger, who would become far better known for his equally bonkers performance as Dr. Pretorious in Whale’s 1935 masterpiece The Bride of Frankenstein. As in the earlier feature that evening, The Black Cat, tension is clear from the very beginning as the Femm siblings can not agree as to whether or not the stranded motorists should be allowed to stay the night. Horace and his compassion win out, as it is decided they could stay but “can’t have beds” as per Rebecca.
Because this film was made prior to the enforcement of the Hays Code, the subject matter, again, can get pretty racy for a 1930s film. Rebecca is a religious fanatic, telling Margaret of her family’s “sinful” history before accusing her of being sinful as well while watching her change. It is in this scene that Whale’s challenge of religious and societal norms becomes most apparent. As Rebecca’s religious fanaticism and sexual repression come to a head, Rebecca comments “You’re wicked too,” while admiring Margaret’s body in her gown. She continues “you think of nothing but your long, straight legs and your white body, and how to please your man. You revel in the joys of fleshly love, don’t you?” As she feels Margaret’s gown, she comments “that’s fine stuff, but it’ll rot.” She follows this by touching Margaret’s bare upper chest, almost to her breast, “that’s finer stuff still, but it’ll rot too in time.” The scene is interrupted by a knocking, and Rebecca exits. Though she leaves, Margaret still sees her reflection in a skewed mirror, the mental scar of this assault still apparent. Margaret seems to begin to lose her composure, and heads out to the other guests in her gown. Upon seeing her, Roger comments “good for you, Mrs. Waverton! You make it seem like a party.” A close up on Margaret’s glassy eyes, on the verge of tears, tell the whole story; a story as old as time told by women that were the victim of some form of sexual assault or betrayal. Like so many women in similar predicaments throughout history, Margaret takes a breath and joins the dinner party, not daring to speak of her experience.
While the violence in this film isn’t as overt as the previous feature of the night, the psychological horror is at the forefront here. With themes of abuse, sexually and emotionally at the hands of Rebecca, physically by the alcoholic brute Morgan, and psychologically by the implied presence of Saul, the pyromaniac brother locked away upstairs, this tale of two groups of travelers stranded in an old, dark mansion during a heavy storm was a fitting coda to a wonderful double feature of pre-code Universal horror classics.
Like The Black Cat, the Old Dark House print was also beautifully restored by the Library of Congress and the best available home version is by far the 2017 Cohen Media Group blu ray release. It is worth seeking out, and the best I’ve seen the film look on any home video release.
This article could not exist without the amazing years of research put in by the great genre historians Tom Weaver, David J. Skal, Michael Brunas, and John Brunas. The benefit of having all their compiled work in books and documentaries can not possibly be understated.
For information on the Landmark Jersey Loew’s theater including a schedule of upcoming programs, visit http://www.loewsjersey.org/.