“The Black Cat” (1989) Review
by Emily Nagle
Happy National Black Cat Day! 🐈⬛ 🐾 🖤 This day was established in 2011 by Wayne H. Morris. After experiencing the loss of both his sister and her 20-year-old black cat named Sinbad, Morris created this day to abolish myths associated with black cats. Over a decade later, observance of this day has only increased each year! In honor of this special day, I watched a horror film from Galxy’s catalog, titled “The Black Cat“.
Here’s a bit of background on the film: while it’s marketed in the United States as “The Black Cat”, it’s actually an Italian film originally titled “Demons 6: De Profundis”. Director Luigi Cozzi directed a few other films in the “Demon” series, but this one is not a sequel (even though it was intended as one, which is really confusing). The American title of “The Black Cat” comes from an Edgar Allan Poe story.
As for black cats, this movie is surprisingly lacking. In fact, it’s not even really about cats. There are a few black cats that show up randomly a few times throughout the film, but they don’t actually do anything. Poe’s story is about someone who starts abusing animals, but this movie has absolutely nothing to do with that, instead having a completely different plot.
“The Black Cat” follows film director Marc (Urbano Barberini) and his actress wife Anne (Florence Guerin) as they shoot a horror movie. All is going well until Anne is haunted by visions of her character, a witch named Levana who has risen from the dead after hundreds of years. The movie is super absurd, and has weird pacing. As a result of the awkward pacing and crazy stuff just randomly happening (in addition to the black cats popping up, there’s other weird creatures and a few bloody shots), it’s hard to tell what’s going on.
While it’s fairly devoid of dark-colored felines, if you’re looking for a crazy, over-the-top horror movie that you don’t want to think super hard about, “The Black Cat” is free to watch now on Galxy.