7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fulci's underappreciated gem., June 29, 2001
Along with Manhattan Baby, The Black Cat stands as one of Fulci's most maligned movies of this period of his career. Personally, I feel that in many ways this is a much better film than Manhattan Baby, but also not quite as enjoyable. Manhattan Baby reached for stars that its budget and writing never quite allowed it to achieve, failing in many of its attempts but still aspiring to be greater than the sum of it's parts.
The Black Cat is a much more grounded film, allowing the audience's knowledge of Poe's tale, along with the beautifully photographed English landscape to pull the film along. One notices almost right off that this movie doesn't really feel much like a Fulci film at all. There is some gore, but most of it is limited to blood flow, shed without the huge spurting wounds, or chunks of human flesh that the maestro is so well known for. The story moves with a linear feel, not jumping around, or making huge leaps in logic that the average viewer couldn't possibly follow. And the action, while present never hits the nerve shattering breaking point that usually accompanies a Lucio Fulci film.
This movie is more a tribute to the gothic Poe adaptations of Roger Corman from the 60's; as if directed by an eye obsessed Pete Walker. Fulci pulls in the bizarre landscapes, the paranoid actions of the locals. And a lighter, more humorous tone than usually permeates his films, and he does it all beautifully.
The most fun part of this film is by far the title feline himself (or herself, one never really knows). The cat runs and attacks playfully through the movie, dubbed with near lion level roaring, and thrown into the faces of his victims by some off camera hands. Plenty of unintentionally funny scenes occur as a result of this unthreatening cat clawing peoples hands and faces into bloody shreds. But despite these shortcomings, the animal does have a certain personality all its own. Fulci's countless eyeball close ups really make the audience feel as if we are bonding with the cat, which makes the scenes of it's intended demise that much more powerful.
If you are a fan of Fucli, Eurohorror, or Poe, you should be able to find something in this movie that will appeal to you. Don't come in expecting nothing but wall to wall gore, this film is much different than that. But then again, those people who get mad when Fulci's movies aren't wall to wall gore never really understood his work anyway.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Clarification about Il Gatto Nero, July 17, 2001
By A Customer
Mishap alert and clarification of the confusion: The poster cover for Anchor Bay's DVD of Lucio Fulci's Il Gatto Nero is a WRONG ONE. I believe it belongs to Luigi Cozzi's film of the same title made in 1989, a completely different movie. (BTW this is why the director for this DVD is listed as Cozzi and not Fulci on this page. It is obviously a mistake traceable to Anchor Bay; there is something to be said for commissioning an original artwork, after all) However, the content of the Anchor Bay edition is unmistakably a Fulci film. Come on, the styles of Cozzi and Fulci are as different from one another as those of Woody Allen and Michael Bay are... it is IMPOSSIBLE to mix these two directors up!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting Fulci film, with a minimal level of gore., June 22, 2001
The name Lucio Fulci is infamous among the circles of horror fans, and a synonymous of gore, and blood soacked films. However, in the case of the black cat, this does not apply. The black cat is freely adapted from a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, and its more like a mystery film, than a horror film, since the gore level is minimal. The story is about a series of murders that take place in a small english village, and the investigation of a scotland yard inspector, who tries to reveal the murderer, suspecting him to be a local medium who has the ability to communicate with the dead. This is not the typical fulci film, and fans who expect that it will be gory will probably be disappointed as it tends to be more like a mystery than a horror film. As far as the supplements of the disc are concerned, they're minimal, with only a fulci biography and a theatrical trailer. The quality ( on the Anchor Bay DVD )of the picture is sharp, with vibrant colors but there are some occasional blemishes and scratches, and the most disturbing thing is a set of two vertical lines that appear every now and then on the right side of the screen , and keep appearing till the very end of the film. The sound is in mono, the dialogues are clear with no hissing and crackles. All in all, not the typical fulci flick, but a pleasant film to watch aimed mainly for the fans.
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