“Cats take orders from no one.” No comment. Join your faithful Grue-Crew – Crystal Cleveland, Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, and Jeff Mohr – as they try to figure out exactly what’s up with the cat in Lucio Fulci’s version of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat (1981).
Decades of Horror 1980s
Episode 184 – The Black Cat (1981)
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A professor with the psychic ability to communicate with the dead uses his powers on his pet cat in order to take vengeance upon his enemies.
IMDb
- Director: Lucio Fulci
- Writers: Biagio Proietti & Lucio Fulci (screenplay), Edgar Allan Poe (story: “The Black Cat,” 1843)
- Cinematography by: Sergio Salvati
- Cast
- Patrick Magee as Prof. Robert Miles
- Mimsy Farmer as Jill Trevers
- David Warbeck as Inspector Gorley
- Al Cliver as Sgt. Wilson
- Dagmar Lassander as Lillian Grayson
- Bruno Corazzari as Ferguson
- Geoffrey Copleston as Inspector Flynn
- Daniela Doria as Maureen Grayson (as Daniela Dorio)
The Black Cat is Bill’s pick and he admits to being pleasantly surprised. Even so, he points out the film does come amidst some of Fulci’s best work. Chad really enjoyed The Black Cat, identifying the story and Patrick Magee’s performance as high points. It seemed a little rough at first to Crystal, but The Black Cat did grow on her. She identifies the story as being better than those in many of Fulci’s films and you have to love Patrick Magee and, of course, the cat. Not quite as gruesome as many of Fulci’s films, Jeff wonders why The Black Cat’s most graphic shot is scaled back in the film as opposed to what’s shown in the trailer. The exact nature of the cat is left open to interpretation but the crew tries to nail it down anyway.
As of this writing, The Black Cat is available to stream VOD and on physical media as a Blu-ray disc from Arrow Video.
Every two weeks, Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1980s podcast will cover another horror film from the 1980s. The next episode’s film, chosen by Crystal, will be Peter Jackson’s first film, Bad Taste (1987). You won’t want to miss that one!
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Jeff has written for Horrornews.net and SQ Horror Magazine. He currently writes for Gruesome Magazine and is a co-host of the Decades of Horror podcasts - The Classic Era, 1970s, and 1980s - and the Gruesome Magazine Podcast.
