Review of The Black Cat (1981) by Ryan M — 24 Aug 2011

2.1/10.

Lucio Fulci possesses this amazing, fascinating, one-of-a-kind ability to take gore, something that is meant to entertain, and make it just-plain boring. It's like if you've seen one of this guy's movies, you have seen them all. Frequently silly, under plotted, and brainless; Fulci just keeps getting worse and worse, as it would seen. Maybe half of his filmography shouldn't have made it anywhere outside of his home-land after all; I mean, I can live without movies like "The Beyond", which was poorly written and not quite as surreal as I expected it to be, and worst of all, borderline pretentious. I like films like "Don't Torture a Duckling" and "Zombie", but this; this is just absurd.

The film I'm talking about is "The Black Cat", Fulci's adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's story of the same name. I suppose it's loosely based on Poe's literary tale; but none the less, it's not a completely original work, and it shows. The movie just sucks, and that's pretty much it. I wouldn't watch it, and I can't imagine who would. It's boring, tedious, lame, goofy, and forgettable. It has some style, but what's style without substance or artistry?

Fulci is no artist; and he never will be. His films aren't surreal, artistic, or particularly interesting more than half of the time. I've disliked nearly everything I've seen out of this guy, and "The Black Cat" is one of his worst flicks yet.

So basically a cat is being possessed by lost souls courtesy of its master, a psychic, to murder people by scratching them, sending them hurling towards their even more unfortunate death. If you like that kind of stuff as far as gory deaths go, then "The Black Cat" is the movie for you.

On the other hand, if you want a movie that has a story to tell, or has any REAL substance whatsoever, then you may want to look elsewhere. I have no problem with the Lucio Fulci fans of the world enjoying the film, for it was made specifically for them, but I hate how the guy's a filmmaker who thinks his audience is full of idiots. We are not idiots, or at least, a good amount of us aren't.

To its credit, the gore scenes are pretty mediocre, but as I mentioned earlier, they still bored me to death. Fulci lived for his fans, the kind who liked what he did, but that doesn't mean that all his works are respectable. I suppose I don't mind Lucio Fulci's body of work, as he enjoyed making these mediocre-to-just-plain-awful gore flicks, but I'm no gorehound, but I do like horror films, and "The Black Cat" has a distractingly bad sense of style, and an even worse lack of storytelling skills. There's nothing to see here. Just like there was nothing to see from "Manhattan Baby" or "The New York Ripper". Move along, people.