Masters of Horror: Episode 24 The Black Cat

I love Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs. That said, however, this is not what I would have expected from them. It isn't horrible, but I honestly have no idea what tone they were going for. It varies wildly between drama, camp, and gore, and the depiction of Poe seems to be based on the now-discredited biography written by Rufus Griswold. Whether Gordon thought that Poe really was a drunken madman, or just thought it would make a good story, I don't know.

To spoil the ending: It's all a dream. The entire point of this story is that Poe (Combs) was desperate for money to treat his wife's (Elyse Levesque) tuberculosis, and had a bad dream that inspired him to write The Black Cat (I have not yet read that story, so I can't comment on the relation between it and this episode).

I suspect they made this episode a dream mainly so that they could feature a series of bizarre events that would have been mentioned by Poe's biographers had they actually happened. I certainly think it would be common knowledge if his wife had been prematurely declared dead, and he tried to burn down their home with her body in it, after hanging his cat. Honestly, I think this episode might have worked better if they'd simply declared it to be an alternate universe, and left it at that.

To address the actual plot: Poe's gets into a conflict with his cat, Pluto. He seems to be looking for excuses to blame the cat for the problems of his own alcoholism. He gouges out the cat's eye for distracting him, even as he's ignoring his writing to drink. He blames the initial “death” of his wife on the cat killing their other pets, even though she was primarily upset about Poe's drinking. After the cat and his wife both return from the dead, the cat with a white mark where Poe's noose had been, he kills his wife with an axe he swung at the cat and walls her body up in the basement (yes, The Cask of Amontillado, I know that one). The cat somehow gets into the walls with his wife's corpse, and mimics the sound of her screaming to draw the police. Poe runs, and the dream comes to an end, with the usual “everything is fine” moment. There's no shocking final twist, Poe writes his story and the episode ends.

I'm discussing the plot briefly because there isn't a lot to discuss. This episode moves slowly, and by the end is rather tedious. If they were going to make the whole story a dream, I would have at least expected some effort to make it a truly thrilling dream. Surely the director and star of Re-Animator could have managed something appropriate to that task.

The episode is well made, with good production values and acting, but I can't really recommend it. It's like a slow drama occasionally interrupted by bits of ham and gore in the style of Re-Animator, as if even Gordon was getting bored with this story.