The Black Cat

Spoiler alert.

A newlywed couple unwinds on their honeymoon, carefreely travelling throughout Eastern Europe, wilfully embracing romantic stratagems, to celebrate their new life together.

Suddenly a stranger joins them in their spacious train compartment, who happens to be heading to the same destination, with which he's intimately familiar (Bela Lugosi as Dr. Vitus Werdegast). 

Upon departure, he secures a ride, and they set off into a forbidding storm, dispiritingly crashing not so long after, lodging fortunately available nearby.

But Vitus has failed to tell them that he's recently returned from prison, and seeks vengeance at the very establishment where they happen to be spending the night.

The owner (Boris Karloff as Hjalmar Poelzig) cheated him during a war along with many of their brave compatriots, for he longed for Vitus's precious wife, and cowardly sought to save his own skin.

Vitus's wife perished shortly thereafter but their daughter enchantingly grew, and eventually wed the man who had ruined her family, lacking paramount prerequisite knowledge.

He also loyally worships Satan and conducts forbidden rituals with local elites at his home.

The young couple struggles to adapt.

Without preponderant divine mercy.

More concerned with character and mood than striking shocking spry special effects, The Black Cat haunts without graphic supplement, as old school legends face off for the first time.

Was this narrative frightening for audiences way back and does it still scare peeps to this very day, have there always been those who find it comic, or perhaps abounding with sardonic frights?

Horror certainly has become much more technical in terms of mind-bogglingly mad diabolics, if you went from finding The Black Cat startling what would you make of A Nightmare on Elm Street?

Is horror more suited to the censors of its time or can it function at random, ahistorically?, audiences from the '30s would have been less familiar with Freddy or Jason, but their world was much more accustomed to war torn strife.

Were censors more strict long ago because the world was still much more blunt and chaotic, and they refused to encourage theoretical bedlam because they distrusted aggrieved elementals?

Apart from the pandemic, the last 75 years haven't seen grandiose crazed distress, on a mass scale like World War II anyways, not that there haven't been sundry harrowing incidents.

Can't say I'll ever get used to lockdowns.

Although they're necessary when things get out of hand. 

I didn't find The Black Cat comic.

I thought it was a cool bit of offbeat storytelling.

Detour

Nestled in an imaginative enclave, precociously performing with enigmatic adrenaline, an artistic couple contemplates progression, alternative gigs, perhaps a move. 

The piano player entertains wedlock and dreams of resonant conjugal consummation, but the singer sets her sights on Hollywood and soon she's hit the road for L.A.

Inclined to romantically subsist on un/conscious conceptions of loyalty and devotion, her distraught beau haplessly hangs on until his presence is one day requested.

But he can't afford a bus ticket so it's time to hitchhike west, a crash course in random interpersonal attentive discourse phased ensuing.

But one of his jaded interlocutors passes away in the forlorn night, and Mr. Roberts (Tom Neal) doesn't know what to do, so he ditches the body, and keeps on drivin'.

He makes it through a routine scan before patiently stopping to shyly gas up, when he notices a wayward belle seeking passage off to the side (Ann Savage as Vera).

Their discussions are initially glib before she ferociously lays it on 'im, she's had a ride in this car before only with a different lonesome driver.

He emphatically insists that he is not a murderous criminal, yet she isn't the trusting kind, even if she doesn't fear for her life.

She's more interested in selling the car and using the money to go shopping, again, and won't let Mr. Roberts slip away or disappear without dire reckoning.

He's as unlucky as they come, prone to grand idealistic reveries, on his own without a network or an institution to back him up.

She swoops in on his fecund fervour and has soon assumed imperial prominence, the two forging an antithetical derelict dismal gender bias.

His hopes to one day wed and settle down and banally intrigue, mutated into anxious suspicions hysterically clad in verbose irritability. 

If looking for rarefied woe lugubriously distilled through befuddled dis/enchantment,  Detour strays from the master narrative to embalm disgruntled folds.

No chummy freewheeling joyrides or clever concise improvised amelioration, just a steady increasingly angst ridden rollout despondently trekked and touring. 

Not sure if you're really that into old school woebegone film noir, but Detour's a crushing exemplar of the disputed genre's disillusioned tropes.

A good book, canned soup, a recital, a walk through the park, a beanbag chair.

Detour revels in maligned microcosm.

Misguided mischief.

Visceral atrophy.

*I don't mean to be so glum, I just like film noir. And Dostoevsky. But I'm also loving Dickens more and more these days. Plus, Biden's administration seems tip top, and mass vaccinations are on the way. It's still the month of February, but positive things are on the horizon.