The Black Cat (1941)

Rich, eccentric Hanrietta Winslow (Cecilia Loftus) lives on her estate with her house keeper Abigail (Gale Sondergaard), groundskeeper Eduardo (Bela Lugosi), and an excessive number of cats. Her greedy relatives (Basil Rathbone, Anne Gwynne, Gladys Cooper , Claire Dodd, John Eldredge, Alan Ladd) have infested the place, waiting for her to die. They are joined by old acquaintance Hubert Smith (Broderick Crawford) and comic relief Mr. Penny (Hugh Herbert) who hope to make some money off of the estate. Hanrietta is murdered, but only Hurbert believes that, so it is up to him find the killer.

With fabulous cinematography by Stanley Cortez, a chilling and exciting score by Hans J. Salter and Frank Skinner, and a cast including Lugosi, Sondergaard, and Rathbone, how could things go so wrong?

Well, under-using those three is a start. Lugosi’s few moments should be considered a cameo. Making Broderick Crawford—a limited actor whose strength lay in cruel thug roles—the romantic lead was the next step. Far worse is never-funny Hugh Herbert. Really, not a single gag of his lands, and that’s all he does is these goofy gags where he makes whistling sounds and stumbles about; it made me side with the nasty family as we were both joined in our loathing for him.

But it all comes down to the script, the horrible, horrible script. Eric Taylor and Robert Neville had written a standard mystery, but with the success of recent horror-comedies, Universal tossed it to Robert Lees and Frederic Rinaldo—who’d previously done some horror-to-comedy script conversions—to work their crude “magic” on The Black Cat. It’s not a shock the result is a mess. The mystery doesn’t work. We’re way past loopholes. What’s suggested as an answer is impossible, with the killer apparently chosen at random, the actions of the titular cat are not explained, and multiple things happen for no reason. But that could be overlooked if the characters were worth a second of time, or if the dialog was witty, or if it was ever funny. And the last point is the killer. No part of this horror comedy is humorous. With some major comic talent in the lead role (the sort that knows how to tell a joke and when to adlib a better one), this might have worked. But Crawford couldn’t fix this, and no one else had a chance.