Watch The Black Cat For Free

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Really Surprised!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

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.

This is one of those rare Italian movies where it doesn't pay to have beers during it's playing time, because if you do, you'll be in a coma by the halfway mark.That's not really a criticism though, because the Black Cat is a nice change of pace from the splatter of early eighties Italian horror. Rather than spend the running time making people vomit up their own guts, Lucio Fulci has sought to bring back the Gothic tone of those late sixties supernatural movies (The Ghost, Blancheville Monster etc).Patrick Magee (love those eyebrows), is a cantankerous medium taken to wandering graveyards at night, recording the voices of the newly dead. There's plenty of newly dead in this sleepy English town too, which has got something to do with Magee's Black Cat. The two of them spend an awful lot of time staring at each other.Meanwhile, Mimsy Farmer, a visiting American (I think) photographer, gets interested in Magee and spends her time annoying him at his house, just as cop David Warbreck arrives in town, to help local bobby Al Cliver search for some missing teenagers.I'm surprised that Fulci managed to create something so coherent during the run of films that included House By The Cemetery and Manhattan Baby. Although not gore-filled, the first half of the film does consist of the cast being stalked and wasted in a variety of ways, and the only time the film falters is when it starts actually following the story of Poe's Black Cat. Plus, you've got great B-movie fodder in the form of Al Cliver (err...great dubbing there), Daniella Doria and the aged, but still lush, Dagmar Lassander.It wouldn't be a Fulci film without some daftness though, eh? Well, apart from people acting terrified of a cat (although a teleporting, hyper-aggressive cat might be a bit scary), you've got Lassander trying to put out an inferno with a cushion, an absolutely awful bat attack, and I'm still not sure whether to be impressed or start laughing every time Magee appears on screen.Good enough for any Fulci collection, just don't expect gore. Great soundtrack too!

The Black Cat (Lucio Fulci, 1981) Always remember, the title credits say the film is freely adapted from Poe's story. Freely may be the understatement of the year. Best not to think on Poe's tale until the final ten minutes.The killer kitty is at the center of the story, causing a series of accidents in a small Scottish town whose inspector, Wilson (Fulci regular Al Cliver), gets expatriated and calls Scotland Yard. They send in Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck, who also teamed with Fulci for The Beyond the same year). Gorley and Wilson, with the help of plucky American photographer Jill Trevers (sixties biker bad girl Mimsy Farmer), try to solve the crimes while working out what an aging, eccentric mystic (Patrick Magee) has to do with it all.And now, the part that will make Fulci fans wonder who really directed this movie: there's no eye scene, and there's no spider scene. In fact, it's almost as if Fulci wanted to tone down the gore and make an atmospheric, Gothic horror/romance, but without the romance (except for one sex scene that would barely rate a PG-13 today).Fulci himself considers this movie a disaster. Who am I to disagree? Well, I will, at least in part. It's certainly watchable enough, if confused. It's not Zombi or The Beyond, but it's got its endearing points. Worth a free rental.

A disturbing series of shocking fatal "accidents" occur in a sleepy small English village. Stalwart Scotland Yard Inspector Gorley (solid David Warbeck) and snoopy photographer Jill Trevers (the always charming and lovely Mimsy Farmer) investigate the rash of grisly deaths. The most probable suspect turns out to be haughty medium Professor Robert Miles (marvelously played by the great Patrick Magee), a sour outcast who's been trying to communicate with the recently deceased. Director Lucio Fulci, very loosely adapting Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story, ably creates his trademark potently brooding ooga-booga gloom-doom creepy Gothic atmosphere and stages the expected brutal murder set pieces with his customary lip-smacking sadistic flair. Sergio Salvati's sumptuously slick and sparkling cinematography makes exquisitely fluid use of smoothly gliding tracking shots. Pino Donaggio's beautifully chilling and eerie score further adds to the overall spooky tone. Fulci regular Al Cliver pops up as a friendly local police sergeant and poor Dagmar Lassander suffers a memorably fiery demise. The titular cunning, deadly and lethal feline qualifies as one genuinely scary and nasty piece of ferocious work. One of Fulci's most unjustly neglected and underrated fright features.