Welcome to Movie Nights @ The Scratching Post

Film Fanatic Movie Nights is a series of communal film experiences designed to stimulate the senses, feed the mind, and dazzle the eyes. Each film is presented by a film fanatic curator who introduces the film, sets the stage with background and insight, and leads an informal discussion afterward. Whether you come as a viewer, a movie buff, or a full-on fanatic — you're among friends here.

 

This screening is part of Champaign-Urbana's annual month-long celebration of horror films — one of cinema's most inventive, subversive, and enduring forms. This October, explore a carefully curated selection of the genre's greatest achievements on the big screen. Full festival schedule: shocktober-fright.com

 

 

The Black Cat

USA 1934 • 69 min (1.37:1) • Not Rated

Directed by: Edgar G. Ulmer

Starring: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Julie Bishop, Egbert Van Alstyne

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Thursday, October 8, 2026 at 6:30pm

Venue: The Scratching Post (114 E University Ave, Champaign)

Advance tickets: $10 (sold out)

Wait list will be available at the door (starting at 6pm)

Special offer: Join Film-Fanatic.Club today and get one FREE admission plus one drink ticket (more info)

 

About the film

A delirious pre-Code horror classic, this 1930s nightmare is less a traditional monster movie than a collision of German Expressionism, Art Deco modernism, and pure cinematic weirdness. Its bold imagery, sinister eroticism, and gleefully macabre tone make it one of the strangest and most visually distinctive horror films of the classical Hollywood era. For fans of cult cinema, pre-Code Hollywood, and movies that seem to have escaped from another dimension, this is an essential big-screen discovery. The real attraction of this rarely seen gem is the legendary pairing of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, reunited after The Mummy and given characters that allow their contrasting screen personas to collide spectacularly. But the film belongs just as much to Edgar G. Ulmer, whose strikingly economical direction wastes no time plunging audiences into an atmosphere of ominous architecture, occult obsession, sexual tension, and escalating madness.

 

Content Warnings: Horror violence, murder, occult imagery, Satanic themes, torture, nudity, and disturbing imagery.

 

#BorisKarloff #BelaLugosi #ClassicHorror #PreCodeHollywood #HorrorCinema #CultCinema #GermanExpressionism #ArtDeco #UniversalHorror #ClassicCinema

Presented by Chuck Koplinski

When you think of the initial series of Universal horror films, Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, his bride and the Mummy are likely the first things that come to mind. However, towards the end of this first cycle emerged one of the oddest, most perverse entries in the genre, one that still manages to shock today. Directed by Hungarian expatriate Edgar Ulmer, The Black Cat is related to Edgar Allen Poe’s classic short story in name only, as this tale of necrophilia, incest and sadism sprang solely from the filmmaker’s imagination.

 

The movie spat in the face of Hollywood’s Production Code. Established by ex- Postmaster General and studio puppet Will Hays in 1927, this was a list of “don’ts” and “be carefuls” regarding moral content established to guide filmmakers towards producing family-friendly movies. If ever there was a Paper Tiger policy, it was this one. Fearful of government intervention after a series of scandals, the studio heads were worried outsiders would be deputed to regulate the film industry. Realizing this would result in a drastic change in their operations, Louis B, Mayer, Jack Warner and their peers hired Hays who, with his staff, would watch every movie produced and then “suggest” changes that would steer these films towards the moral standards contained in the code.

 

Having no true censorship powers and with his salary paid by the studios, Hays was nothing but a stooge and, as a result, a great deal of racy material made it to the screen. Filmmakers became increasingly emboldened, until activist groups, most prominently the Catholic Church, began monitoring objectionable elements in the Hollywood product. The list kept growing and voices of protest were growing louder. Enter The Black Cat, the film some historians claim was the tipping point towards a stricter enforcement of the code. It’s easy to see how this would become a rallying point for the Moral Majority of the mid-1930’s.

 

Taking place in a modern Bauhaus mansion built upon a mountain of the dead, Ulmer plunges the viewer into a surreal environment driven by grotesque horror which, at turns, is undercut by broad humor, some of it purposeful, some not. Like the stranded couple (David Manners and Julie Bishop) who enter the realm of Dr. Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff), our level of shock increases with each revelation regarding his immoral behavior. Only fellow visitor, Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi) knows the depths of depravity their host is capable of, his presence of a far more personal nature.

 

The mystery of death and ultimately embracing it is the film’s theme. One of the most arresting sequences in the genre takes place when Ulmer’s camera slowly prowls about the Poelzigs’ basement, the mad man casting loving looks at his many former wives, all dead but preserved in clear glass cases, their appearance belying their condition. It’s as if they are caught between this world and the next, Poelzig cruelly refusing to release them to their final rest.

 

Ahead of its time, Cat deals with the issue of PTSD in a modern, poignant manner. Both veterans of a horrible war, Poelzig and Werdergast’s reaction to their experiences couldn’t be more different. Lugosi, in a rare sympathetic role, is moving at times in expressing the debilitating nature of his psychosis, the horrors he’s witnessed on the battlefield never having left him. Though the actor is guilty of overplaying moments, there’s a sincerity in his performance that cannot be denied.

Add a Black Mass and a scene of extreme torture to the perverse sexual elements at play and you have a film that incited an outcry from conservative groups around the country. With boycotts threatened and enacted by the Catholic Church, the studios made some quick changes. Hays was replaced by hardliner Joseph Breen and before you know it, thematic elements like those in The Black Cat were not be seen on screen for decades. Transgressive, daring, horrific and funny, Ulmar’s masterpiece is a brisk tour through the dark, inner workings of the filmmaker’s mind, a timely and timeless.

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