TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

GL84 After a strange series of deaths, a woman in a small-town joins up with a Scotland Yard investigator where they find an eccentric man's troubled black cat is being driven to kill by his psychically- powered thoughts and race to stop his deadly rampage.This one here wasn't all that bad of an effort. One of its better features here is the fact that this one really goes for the exceptional Gothic atmosphere, which not only belies its source material but also works for the film as a whole. The general concept of the socialist investigating the dead in the manner depicted here, using the different paranormal instruments in a quest to unlock the secrets of life after death, feels incredibly Gothic in origin while also managing to work in a typically Gothic reasoning that ultimately ties them together. As well, that forces the film into the scenes of him into the fog-enshrouded graveyards tampering with his tools or walking along the streets as it rolls along making for a wholly chilling atmosphere for this one. Another enjoyable feat here is that their connection to each other also gives this one some really enjoyable attack scenes featuring the cat, which for the most part are pretty shocking in concept and rather realistic in execution. The opening attack in the car gets this one going along nicely, the ambush of the couple inside the boating house comes off as really chilling once they've realized they're trapped and the stalking of the lone victim on the town streets as it continually leaps out of the darkness all give this one quite a lot to really love about this one by employing really fun action scenes. Still, the film's best scenes here are the cats' stalking of the drifter into the abandoned warehouse where it chases him onto the upper floors before leading to a spectacular death and a great scene of it intentionally starting a fire in one victims' house while they're still inside leading to a grand finale which is quite action-packed here which makes for rather impressive scenes here. As these scenes not only give off some nice gore effects and the ability to see the cats' impressive skills at work, these here hold this one up over it's few flaws. One issue with this one is the excessive use of close-ups throughout here which gets tiring very quickly as character's eyes and nose ridge are on-screen more than the cat is. There's an extremely alarming amount of them spread throughout by just about all of the characters, and they become distracting after a while. Another big problem is the almost incredulous plot. The fact that the cat is never really dismissed as a potential suspect is quite troubling, as the fact that a little cat can take out large victims is passed off as being plausible from the very start. Strangely, in a film like this, it needs to hedge the doubt about it a little more, especially from the police inspectors to make their contributions a little more believable. The film's biggest problem, though, is the pacing which spends a lot of time doing nothing in particular which leads to a lot of downtime in here. Otherwise, there's not much to dislike here.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Brief Nudity, Language and violence- against-animals.

Michael_Elliott The Black Cat (1981) ** (out of 4) Professor Robert Miles (Patrick Magee) is not only a psychic but he also has the ability to use his mind to make black cats do whatever he wants. After a series of bizarre murders, a photographer (Mimsy Farmer) notices scratch marks on a victim so Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck) and Sgt. Wilson (Al Cliver) begin to investigate.Lucio Fulci's THE BLACK CAT was released during the boom of his career since this was when the Italian director also made stuff like ZOMBIE and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. For decades this one here was pretty much overlooked because it didn't have the graphic gore and violence like those films but here recently more fans have been giving it a second look.I'm one of those fans and while the film improved a little from my first viewing there's still way too much campy stuff here for it to fully work in my book. One of the biggest problems with the movie is the fact that those cute little kittens are just never scary. I'm sorry but if you're main murder weapon/creature isn't scary then it's going to damage the movie. Another problem is that the attack scenes are all rather campy with it being obvious that people are throwing the cats on the actors and then we get fake cat paws scratching people up.There are a few worthy things in the film including the cast, which is actually quite good. Plus it's always fun to see the likes of Magee, Farmer, Warbeck and Cliver. Another thing the film has going for it is the cinematography, which is pretty darn good as is the music score. Still, THE BLACK CAT has to be considered a disappointment that should have been much better.

Master Cultist If this was any other director, I would probably have given this a higher rating, but this is Fulci and, frankly, we expect better things.A mad old guy - played by Patrick Magee, the guy in the wheelchair from A Clockwork Orange - owns a cat, which he uses to kill people he isn't too fond of, but gradually the cat develops a mind of its own and is not so easy to control. Those pesky felines and their wily ways.I'll admit, there are some spooky moments, and the effects occasionally border on the gross - though nothing compared with his more famous work - but overall it has the feel of an above average Hammer movie.Not bad, but not great either.

ferbs54 Featuring as it does as homicidal and nasty-tempered a feline as has ever been shown on screen, Lucio Fulci's "The Black Cat" (1981) is certainly not a film guaranteed to appeal to the average ailurophile. Although the picture jettisons most of Poe's 1843 short story, from which little but the title remains, it still tells an interesting tale indeed. In it, we meet Robert Miles (intensely played by veteran actor Patrick Magee in one of his last roles), a crusty eccentric living in a small English village whose two main hobbies seem to be recording the voices of the dead in a local cemetery and avoiding being mauled by his pet, the titular black tabby. American photographer Jill Trevers (the attractive Mimsy Farmer) investigates after a wave of homicides sweeps through the small town. Along for the ride in a small part is Dagmar Lassander, here sporting a good deal more avoirdupois than in, say, 1970's "Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion" but still giving a blazing performance nonetheless. Fulci's direction here is typically stylish, replete with stalking cat's eye POV and more close-ups of eyes in general than you've ever seen (probably in excess of 100 such close-ups, I'd guesstimate), and Pino Donaggio's intriguing title tune does set the baroque mood nicely. Many events in the film go unexplained (that levitating bed, for instance, and that hanging-cat etching), and a repeat viewing did not help me understand things any better than the first. Though hardly a giallo per se, the picture does feature any number of grisly murders, even if there is never a mystery for the viewer as to who the (four-legged) culprit is. A rampaging bat sequence late in the film seems almost a direct lift, strangely, from an earlier Fulci film, 1971's "Lizard in a Woman's Skin." Still, any movie with cats, rats AND bats can't be all bad, right? And oh...another great-looking DVD here, from the always dependable Anchor Bay.