Thursday, April 28, 2016

Lucio Fulchi's The Black Cat

Hiya gang. Well we have viewed a few TV series and I was initially going to talk about DC Comics Legends of Tomorrow but... I wanted to watch a movie instead. Yup, no real rhyme or reason to the week. I just decided to switch gears. Today's review will be instead a Lucio Fulchi horror movie based on the writings of Edgar Allen Poe. No I am not going into great lengths who Edgar Allen Poe is. Read a book, short story or any of many biographies about the man. This story hails about a professor of the occult, psychology and parapsychology who feels to exact vengeance on those that had wrong him in the past and present. A plucky photographer feels there is more to than words.

This is The Black Cat.

CLEAN UP MY POOPS!!!













We see a fisherman make his way to the car and drive through a village that looked like Notting Hill as he and the black cat make vicious eye contact, distracting said fisherman causing him to crash through his windscreen causing him to bleed out and his car to burst almost instantly in the flames. A clear factory recall. Yeah that is all in the first two minutes. Gotta say Fulchi never skimps on violence but right out of the gate seems to be his m.o. An elder gentleman sits in his study listening to recordings he has made conversing with the dead via electronic tape. The same black cat makes his way into his study, slashing the professor for not cleaning up his poops quick enough and saunters out.

Cut to young blonde photographer Jill (Mimsy Farmer of Body of Love, The Suspects, Autopsy, The Istambul Train and The Girl from Trieste) has traveled into an ancient dungeon to spy on the Crimson Executioner's former handy work, possibly an BDSM rave that when horribly wrong (the safety word was pickles) when a copper shoos her from the cemetery she was taken snapshots. After discovering a modern day adapter to a battery or recorder she is left with a bit of confusion. But enough of that, it's clearly time of teens played by twenty somethings to get freaky. Another trope of Fulchi is get the boobage in and out of the way. Our young stupid lovers sneak into a boat house that is SOUNDPROOF and AIR TIGHT. Things you do not associate with make out spots.


Um, are you giving me the creeper eye?














We bounce around back to the cemetery in the middle of the night as the prof doesn't seem to have any luck “talking to the dead” and just seems to be null and void with it. Meanwhile the teeny boppers are slowly suffocating in said boathouse with no one aware whatsoever. Scotland Yard is requested a detective Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck of Duck, You Sucker, The Beyond, Hunter of the Apocalypse, Fatal Frames, Pervirella and Razor Blade Smile) to assist in finding the teeny boppers.

Jill meets with Professor Miles (Patrick McGee of Marat/Sade, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, Chariots of Fire, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne and Play for Today) conversing over his chatter with the dead and yes I could see how the village thinks he is a complete nutter butter as he creepy eyes he delivering his dialogue. Telling her of his psychic abilities to interact with the dead then is trying to overtake her mind. Kinda of a jerk move and the cat didn't care for it, slashing him. Miles explains they need one another as they are bound by their anger. Sith lord stuff I am speculating.

The drunken Irish Groundskeeper NOT NAMED Willie claims Miles is a wackjob talking to headstones and being all creeper like. After an all day drinking binge (again remember he is Irish) he wanders back home when he is stalked by the black cat. The cat traps him in a hay loft taunting him with growls, slashing him and leaving him to fall on a pitchfork...the kind that apparently stands upright and can support a grown man's weight. Jill thinks something is amiss with Miles and his cat but only Gorley believes her.  Miles tells Jill with patented creeper eye that the cat is to blame for those youngins death in a methodical manner, carefully played to detail. The cat is more than appears and he is easily riled. 

Will Scotland Yard take action? Will it be public execution if they put him to sleep? Will they grace his grave with Greenies?



With the exception of Miles and the cat, there is no direct link to the film to the short story. This is a dark morbid tale with decent gore effects, creeper mood music and a good cast. Lot of patented eye zooms via Fulchi but ever since Zombi I am just expecting an eye gouge every time.


Does it look like the creeper eye??



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