Il Gatto Nero

The Black Cat
Dead Eyes / Demons 6: De Profundis

Italy 1991
produced by
Lucio Lucidi for World Picture, 21st Century Film Corporation
directed by Lewis Coates (= Luigi Cozzi)
starring Florence Guérin, Urbano Barberini, Caroline Munro, Brett Halsey, Maurizio Fardo, Luisa Maneri, Karina Huff, Alessandra Acciai, Giada Cozzi, Michele Marsina, Jasmine Maimone, Antonio Marsina, Michele Soavi
story by Luigi Cozzi (= Lewis Coates), Daria Nicolodi, screenplay by Luigi Cozzi (= Lewis Coates), music by Vince Tempera

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Horrormovie-director Marc (Urbana Barberini) wants to make the final part to Dario Argento's Mother-Trilogy, with his wife Anne (Florence Guérin) playing the all-mighty witch Levana. Then though Anne starts seeing things, like Levana coming after her, attacking her baby boy, or a young fairy called Sybil (Giada Cozzi) talking to her. Anne soon starts to go out of ther mind a bit, and when Marc's scriptwriter friend (Maurizio Fardo) and a psychic are killed, this isn't exactly something that calms her down.

Everything might have to do with the old bastard (Brett Halsey) who produces Marc's film, or with the fact that Marc has an affair with an actress (Caroline Munro) who wants Anne's role in his movie, and thge two want to drive Anne out of her mind ...

But no, the one who is causing all of this is Levana herself, who has to a degree possessed Anne all along and now apparently needs to kill Anne's baby boy so she can be reincarnated as Anne - or something. In the end, Levana succeeds ... but wait, Anne was not only possessed by Levana but also by the benign fairy Sybil, and Sybil's powers are apparently much greater than Levana's, because she can even move back time - and in the end, she destroys Levana and moves time to a spot before all of this has happened.

A doomed attempt to produce the long-awaited third part to Dario Argento's Mother-Trilogy, this film suffers first and foremost from a script that seems to constantly run off into all different directions all at once and lacks coherency without achieving the nightmarish atmosphere of either Suspiria or Inferno. Add to this a shoestring budget with all the restrictions that come with it (like shoddy special makeup and incongruent effects lifted from other movies), and you're off into trash territory. That the producers were not really convinced in the film and eventually tried to sell it as an Edgar Allan Poe-adaptation (hence the title, though it has nothing to do with Poe's story of the same name)  doesn't exactly sound encouraging either.

That all said, The Black Cat is still somehow entertaining, not as a masterpiece but a typical example of scholcky Euro-horror. True,t hat might mean it's entertaining for all the wrong reasons ... but entertaining, still.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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