From the sublime to the substandard. Poe's Black Cat story has had so many movie incarnations over the years, the best probably being Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key from 1972. Should I have expected anything directed by hackmaster Lucio Fulci to come anywhere near to the quality of that movie? After suffering the abysmal dreck of his other movie from 1981, The Beyond, I guess I got what I deserved spending money and time on his attempt to tackle this classic story, no matter how liberal his writer was with the material.
Material? What material? There's nothing here. As with The Beyond this is just a bunch of completely disconnected scenes where people are killed by a Black Cat (not in-keeping with Poe's story) while multiple story threads are set-up and then immediately abandoned. Not a single part of this movie has any connection to any other part. It's all a jumble of nonsense with only the loosest link to the original story and other adaptations coming in at the very end.
I stand firm and I'm doubling down on my judgment that Fulci was not a film-maker. He was a man with a movie camera who caught random images and placed them in a random order. He had stone-cold ZERO understanding of plot, character, story, special effects, editing, pacing, or acting. Even Michael Bay and Uwe Boll score more points than him. There is some saving grace in Sergio Salvati's cinematography which makes great use of 2.35:1 and has some stunning compositions, but it's not like he's capturing a story, just a lot of wooden actors who have no idea what they are supposed to be discussing or performing.
The quaint English village that is the backdrop for this total garbage is nice to look at too, giving the whole sorry affair the vibe of Midsomer Feline Murders. No one appears to be English though and words never, ever, ever match mouths. In fact, I think the first dialogue was at least ten minutes into the film and often sparse after that. They don't really have much to talk about since nothing is really happening since screenwriter Biagio Proietti does not possess any talent and has simply no clue how write dialogue or make a p-l-o-t happen. Then, when they do speak, it's all incoherent gibberish. But if you want to see characters just walk around for long single takes then you'll be spoiled.
After about fifteen minutes you'll suss this film out and realize that there is no point in siding with any of the characters are they are all just meat for Fulci to kill one-by-one. Why none of them think to just stand on the cat's spine or throw it against the wall is never made clear.
There's nothing here. There's barely really anything to criticize if I'm honest. Just a sequence of random grot presented in an irrelevant order. Criticizing this "adaptation" of The Black Cat for it's pathetic story or bad direction is like blaming a giant landfill for not being Disney's Magic Kingdom. It was never meant to be anything other than a landfill.
Lucio Fulci was the worst director to have ever walked the face of the Earth and you'd be better off spending your time cleaning deep inside the bowl of a public toilet with a three-bristled toothbrush and some phlegm. It would be a more satisfying experience.
Material? What material? There's nothing here. As with The Beyond this is just a bunch of completely disconnected scenes where people are killed by a Black Cat (not in-keeping with Poe's story) while multiple story threads are set-up and then immediately abandoned. Not a single part of this movie has any connection to any other part. It's all a jumble of nonsense with only the loosest link to the original story and other adaptations coming in at the very end.
I stand firm and I'm doubling down on my judgment that Fulci was not a film-maker. He was a man with a movie camera who caught random images and placed them in a random order. He had stone-cold ZERO understanding of plot, character, story, special effects, editing, pacing, or acting. Even Michael Bay and Uwe Boll score more points than him. There is some saving grace in Sergio Salvati's cinematography which makes great use of 2.35:1 and has some stunning compositions, but it's not like he's capturing a story, just a lot of wooden actors who have no idea what they are supposed to be discussing or performing.
The quaint English village that is the backdrop for this total garbage is nice to look at too, giving the whole sorry affair the vibe of Midsomer Feline Murders. No one appears to be English though and words never, ever, ever match mouths. In fact, I think the first dialogue was at least ten minutes into the film and often sparse after that. They don't really have much to talk about since nothing is really happening since screenwriter Biagio Proietti does not possess any talent and has simply no clue how write dialogue or make a p-l-o-t happen. Then, when they do speak, it's all incoherent gibberish. But if you want to see characters just walk around for long single takes then you'll be spoiled.
After about fifteen minutes you'll suss this film out and realize that there is no point in siding with any of the characters are they are all just meat for Fulci to kill one-by-one. Why none of them think to just stand on the cat's spine or throw it against the wall is never made clear.
There's nothing here. There's barely really anything to criticize if I'm honest. Just a sequence of random grot presented in an irrelevant order. Criticizing this "adaptation" of The Black Cat for it's pathetic story or bad direction is like blaming a giant landfill for not being Disney's Magic Kingdom. It was never meant to be anything other than a landfill.
Lucio Fulci was the worst director to have ever walked the face of the Earth and you'd be better off spending your time cleaning deep inside the bowl of a public toilet with a three-bristled toothbrush and some phlegm. It would be a more satisfying experience.