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.

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #69 Re-Animator

I find it interesting that Re-Animator has never been, as far as I’m aware, a particularly controversial film. Interesting, but not inexplicable by any means. To attack such a film for its content would be like complaining that Soldier of Fortune has a right-wing bias. That is to say, those who care have bigger fish to fry, and those who would care to consume the material knew exactly what they were getting themselves into, and thus can hardly complain.

The character of Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is one that I’ve always found truly fascinating. Most Anti-Heroes are driven by some sympathetic desire. That desire could be to help people they care about, or simply to have peace. In West’s case however, his driving force is simply the pursuit of knowledge. He’s hardly the first mad scientist in the history of fiction to have such a desire, but most have at least some remote sense of an end-goal. Even Frankenstein talked of bringing loved ones back from the grave as they were in life.

Not so with West, who seems to revive the dead solely to satisfy his own morbid curiosity about the nature of life. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Stuart Gordon intended some sort of Religious commentary. West as a completely indifferent being, who is almost all-powerful in any environment which he enters, and is completely uninterested in the affairs of humans. As a result, he brings conflict among those who seek to understand and use his power for their own ends. His very mind appears to be a force of nature

Beyond West, the plot of Re Animator is wonderfully insane, but of little consequence. By the end of the movie, there are many gory dead bodies that have been brought back from the grave, and a woman has been raped by a headless corpse. The other characters are interesting, but I personally feel that Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) is of more consequence in Bride of Re Animator. In this film, he serves primarily to give us one character who can play the hero.

Doctor Carl Hill (David Gale), on the other hand exists primarily to give us a generically evil scientist villain whose only role is to be actively malevolent, thus technically making him worse than West by default. He wants to steal West's work, and take the credit and the power for himself. His existence allows West to take the designation of “Protagonist,” simply because West, if left to his own devices, would at least be limited to a fairly small number of re-animated corpses, with no sinister intent.

It would seem that a movie with a protagonist so evil that he could easily serve as a moustache-twirling villain in almost any other film would be too depressing to bother with. But I find Re Animator to be truly fascinating, for its mixture of carnage, characterization, and comedy.

I’m not sure what it says about this film that I find West to be easily the scariest aspect. While his persona is more malevolent, West has what could easily be described as a Hannibal Lector vibe. He’s smarter than everyone around him. And while he may be distinguished from worse villains by lack of malice, he’s also distinguished by the absolute certainty that he will not lose.

If you can’t deal with blood or gore, skip this movie. But if you can, watch it, period.