I suppose any film dipping into the tormented private life of Edgar Allan Poe would drive most to drink, since his poetry and stories were not too far removed from his personal reality. In that regard, Stuart Gordon's second-season "Masters of Horror" episode delivers in spades, with Jeffrey Combs embodying all the depression and madness that afflicted Poe with great pathos. Unfortunately, the desaturated color scheme makes the film visually unappealing (imagine a Hammer production without the bold, vibrant colors), and the overall plot progresses at a slow, melodramatic pace; there are shocks, yes, but no real scares. Actually, some of the details divulged by Gordon, Combs and others on the DVD "making-of" featurette are illuminating, and gave me a bit more respect for what the filmmakers achieved (in a sense, 'The Black Cat' has much in common with E. Elias Merhige's "Shadow of the Vampire"); in retrospect, blending details of Poe's life with his fiction is a neat concept, and the script (co-written by Gordon and Dennis Paoli) blurs the line quite well. 'The Black Cat,' despite its deliberate pace and lack of out-there humor, has a good anchor in Combs (who looks uncannily like Poe) and a few bits of ironic humor; additionally, the last 10 minutes are by turns touching, shocking, and hopeful--the first time in a long time where I've seen a dream sequence applied with such skill and gratification.
Review of The Black Cat
