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.