Bloodtype Online

    Good God there are a lot of movies that have been released under the title The Black Cat.  This movie is about an elderly woman who is surrounded by her greedy family.  They are all hovering around waiting for her to die so that they can inherit their portion of her estate.  On the behest of one of the relatives a local man named Hubert brings in a buyer who wants to purchase the contents of the house.  The only problem is that she doesn’t want to sell.  Someone takes care of that when they kill the old woman, which then raises another issue.  The will stipulates that none of the family inherits anything until the housekeeper either chooses to move out of the family home or dies.  Guess what happens?  Of course someone offs the housekeeper, which clues everyone in that there is a murder around.  But is it one of the family?  Or perhaps it is the creepy groundskeeper (played by Bela Lugosi)?   

    This is one of those great old movies that walks the tightrope between comedy and mystery.  There is a decent mystery in the plot and the movie does a great job of playing it’s cards close to the vest, never revealing too much and keeping the audience guessing till the end.  There are also quite a few creepy moments in the movie, so it also works as a horror movie.  Throw in veteran Vaudeville comedic Hugh Herbert as comic relief and you have a movie that is just fun to watch.  Also in the cast are a couple of genre veterans.  Bela Lugosi turns in a fun performance as Eduardo the groundskeeper and cat wrangler.  The man does more with his eyes than many actors did with their dialogue.  Also fun to watch is Basil Rathbone as one of the greedy heirs waiting for the old lady to die so that he can launch a new business venture.  This leads to a great piece of dialogue when Rathbone’s character is attempting to figure out who committed the murders.  One of the other characters looks at him and says, “He thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes”.  This is of course funny because Rathbone was well known for playing that character in a series of movies.  Yeah okay so I’m a nerd. 

    I know that a lot of these older movies don’t hold any appeal to a modern audience.  But don’t discount this one because it is a very clever movie.  It manages to work comedy, mystery, and horror into one script.  You can’t really ask for more than that from any movie.  If you enjoyed some of the Abbott and Costello classics like Who Done it or Hold that Ghost then definitely check out this classic.  This movie gets an old school recommendation from me. 

Rating - *** 

- John “El Juan” Shatzer