The Black Cat 1934 movie – Go Retire Psychiatrist

The atmosphere for the Svengoolie TV show airing of the 1934 movie “The Black Cat” was nothing short of electric—as in electrical storm. I thought the mood of ambivalence in the film was firmly set for about the first half hour of the movie. That was how long the TV station weather alert was on screen, shrinking the viewing size of the movie somewhat to make room for a map of the counties at risk and the scrolling warnings about which east central Iowa counties were affected by the flood watch and guidance about what to do.

Anyway, the film is not related in any way to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same title. The movie was directed by Edgar Ulmer and starred Bela Lugosi as the Hungarian psychiatrist and ex-WWI POW (that’s right, I said “psychiatrist”), Dr. Vitus Werdegast; Boris Karloff as the satanic and necrophiliac Hjalmar Poelzig, the former WWI commander of the Fortress Marmorisch and a famed architect who built an ultra-modern mansion on top of the grisly site where thousands of soldiers were killed. Vitus and Hjalmar play chess for the souls of the aspiring novelist Peter Alison (David Manners) and his wife Joan (Jacqueline Wells) who, unfortunately get stranded there along with Vitus after the bus carrying them crashes on the way from the train station to various hotels and Disney World.

The mood of ambivalence I thought was evident, contrasting the creepiness of Hjalmar and Vitus grimly gambling in a chess match for the lives of Joan and Peter and the comicality of the two policemen interviewing the Alisons and the two heavies about the bus accident. The lieutenant and the sergeant arguing with each other in a “My hometown’s better than yours” exchange reminds me of Abbott and Costello. I recommend you see it for yourselves on the Internet Archive; it’s about 35 minutes in.

Contrast this with the hysterical cat phobic Vitus (despite being a psychiatrist) throwing a knife at one of the many black cats prowling around the house after it ejects a hairball on the floor! Or Hjalmar thumb wrestling with Vitus until the latter chooses to pick up what looks like an emery board from an array of much larger knives and bazookas on a large table—and prepares to flay Hjalmar with it. This would only make Hjalmar look even more excruciatingly well groomed, along with the precisely trimmed haircut carefully smeared with a pound of Brylcreem.

I think “The Black Cat” is a hoot. It’s a litter box full of nuggets of melodramatic ailurophobia with here and there a hairball of ambivalence but hey, nobody’s purr-fect!

Shrilling chicken rating 4/5

Calling all stations, clear the air lanes, clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!

What do you get when you cross a black cat with a rubber chicken? Something else Svengoolie has to dodge. Keep reading for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) attempts at this joke.

The upcoming Svengoolie show movie this Saturday will be “The Black Cat” which I’ve never seen before. One of the posters I see on the internet implies that it’s based on Edgar Allen Poe’s short story of the same name.

I never read the gory story until a couple of days ago and I’m hoping the film won’t be like that. It also reminded me of a novel about animal cruelty given to me as a gift when I was a kid. “Beautiful Joe” was written by Margaret Marshall Saunders and it emphasized how people can treat animals humanely. It was a true story about a dog that was rescued from a sadistic master who mutilated the animal by cutting off its tail and ears in a fit of rage.

Just for fun I tried to find out AI would come up with when I asked it about a joke which would start with “What do you get when you cross a black cat with a chicken?”

The AI answer: “Something which scratches the furniture and lays eggs.” Other answers were “Cluck-ty cat” or “Meow-ster Hen.”

And when I asked for the AI joke using “What do you get when you cross a black cat with a rubber chicken?” AI came up with:

“That’s a classic riddle! The answer is: A lucky squeak!” And the AI goes on to explain: “It plays on the idea that black cats are considered unlucky, and rubber chickens make a squeaking sound.”

See what he did there? Neither did I.