REVISITING THE MASTERS OF HORROR THE BLACK CAT, DIRECTED BY: STUART GORDON

28/7/2021

We are living in a golden age of horror on TV. Shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Supernatural’ and ‘American Horror Story’ have effectively taken the genre mainstream, offering weekly doses of gore and mayhem to the masses. Go back a decade or two however, and genre fans had far fewer options to choose from.
Anthology shows, like ‘Tales From the Crypt’, ‘Monsters’ or ‘Tales From the Darkside’ were king during the horror heyday of the 1980s, providing cheesy and cheerful tongue in cheek horror in half hour bites. It wasn’t until 2005 that the TV horror anthology show got serious, and delivered arguably the most consistent, memorable and scary anthology show to date.

The brainchild of horror legend Mick Garris, the show’s title is no hyperbole. ‘Masters of Horror’ brought together the best horror talent Hollywood (and beyond) had to offer. Episodes directed by undisputed genre luminaries such as John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento and Stuart Gordon were like hour long movies brought to your TV screen. High production values, A-List talent and a free reign to do whatever they pleased resulted in some truly unforgettable work from a group of horror legends let off their leash. These are stories that have stayed with me in the fifteen years since many initially aired and, in this series, I’ll be revisiting all twenty-six episodes, one at a time, to shine a light on a fondly remembered and undeniably influential moment in horror TV history.
Join me as I take a look back at

The Black Cat
Directed by: Stuart Gordon
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Elyse Levesque, Aron Tager, Christopher Heyerdahl
Original Air Date: 19 January 2007
Synopsis: Short on money as his ailing wife succumbs to consumption, Edgar Allen Poe begins a slow descent into madness, tormented by his pet cat.

REVISITING THE MASTERS OF HORROR THE BLACK CAT
DIRECTED BY: STUART GORDON

Mostly known for his (very loose) Lovecraft adaptations, including Masters of Horror’s first season episode ‘Dreams in the Witch House’, Stuart Gordon opts for an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation for his follow up and, while it’s undoubtedly more faithful to its source material than, say, ‘From Beyond’ or ‘Re-Animator’, there is a fun twist in The Black Cat whereby the unnamed narrator of the 1843 Poe classic is replaced here by Edgar Allan Poe himself.

I usually save my opinion on the episode until the final paragraph but I’m going to break with tradition and put it out there from the very start; I love this episode. I’d put it up there with ‘Cigarette Burns’ and ‘Pelts’ as the absolute best that Masters of Horror produced and, twenty-four episodes in, I think that is high praise indeed. I thought I should let readers know in advance that the majority of this article is going to be gushing praise. You have been warned.

The episode opens on a very low-key and downbeat note. We see Edgar Allan Poe (Jeffrey Combs) taking a meeting with his publisher (Aron Tager). He is attempting to sell some of his poetry but it’s clear the publisher is largely uninterested. What he really wants is more of Poe’s “fantastic tales”, something which Poe is struggling to produce, suffering as he is from a severe bout of writer's block. Back at home, things aren’t any better as his wife Cissie (Elyse Levesque) is unwell. Quite how unwell, we will soon find out.

It really is incredible how much Jeffrey Combs looks like Edgar Allen Poe in this episode. I mean, he is still recognisably Jeffrey Combs, but there’s zero doubt who he is portraying here. It’s pretty impressive makeup I’ve got to say. Also, while we’re using ‘impressive’ and ‘Jeffrey Combs’ together, I’m going to have to take a minute to impress upon you just how fantastic he is in ‘Black Cat’. I’ve long considered Combs an incredibly underrated actor who made a big impact in a cult horror film and got typecast (see also Bruce Campbell). It’s so gratifying to see him given an opportunity to get stuck into a character piece like this and see just what he’s capable of. Not to take away from how good pretty much every aspect of this episode is, but his fully committed depiction of Poe absolutely elevates the material into something special.

We soon learn that Poe is struggling financially, due seemingly in no small part to his alcoholism. A scene in a local bar shows just how far he has fallen, alienated as he is from his peers and looked down upon by anyone who crosses his path. When he returns home drunk he finds Cissie entertaining a gentleman who is looking to buy her piano. In a sudden and upsetting scene whereby Cissie plays the piano for her husband and guest one last time before it is taken away in exchange for money they so desperately need, we find out just how ill she has become.

I’m a massive Stuart Gordon fan, thanks in no small part to ‘Re-Animator’, but I love his Lovecraft output in general (‘From Beyond’ and ‘Dagon’ are both spectacular). When you think Stuart Gordon you think outrageous excess and crazy over the top visuals. None of that is really present with ‘The Black Cat (well, bar one scene, but we’ll get there). It’s a very restrained episode for the most part and it replaces his usual sense of humour with something more nuanced and downbeat. Because it is a more controlled offering, you really get an appreciation for just how talented Gordon was as a director. Scenes like the one with Cissie at her piano when the extent of her illness becomes clear, it heart-breaking, dramatic and very stylised, and things like this are far more noticeable when the tone is a little more grounded.

With Cissie now bedbound, and with doctors’ bills Poe can ill afford, he sits down to write one of his fantastic tales in order to receive enough money as an advance to pay for his wife’s medicine. From this point on, anything that happens should be taken with a pinch of salt, because it isn’t made clear until the very last scene how much of what we see on screen is really happening, and how much of it is in Poe’s head. He struggles to get any writing done and finds himself increasingly distracted, and subsequently tormented by, his wife’s cat Pluto and the more tortured Poe becomes, the less we can trust what we are seeing.

Because this episode is depicting mental illness (Poe was known to suffer severely from depression) it is more abstract and dreamlike than any other episode of the series to date, as Poe is quickly shown to be an unreliable narrator. I loved that Poe, who is famous for his unreliable narrators, is depicted as one himself in this episode. It’s a re-telling of a story (‘The Black Cat’) about an increasingly unstable mind, that makes enough small changes to allow the author of said tale to become the protagonist, and change the story to be about him finding the inspiration to write it. It’s confusing but inspired stuff.

I’m reluctant to talk too much more about what happens in the episode, partly because a large portion of it may or may not actually happen, but also because I don’t want to spoil the ending, which ties things up nicely and gives us a lot of answers. I did tease earlier on, however, that Gordon couldn’t resist putting one gross-out scene in here. I’m all for a quieter and more thoughtful Stuart Gordon episode but the ‘Re-Animator’ fan in me did cheer a little when he threw in a pretty grisly kill. It is lifted straight from the original short story (although significantly more gruesome in Gordon’s version), so I think almost 180 years is long enough to consider this spoiler fair game.

Poe chases Pluto down into his cellar where Cissie follows to see what all the noise is about. She finds her husband desperately trying to get his hands on the cat that has been taunting him. In an inconsolable rage, Poe picks up an axe, hoping to kill the cat once and for all, takes a swing when he sees it run past him, and misses in quite spectacular fashion, cleaving Cissie’s head in two instead. Cue almost a full minute of poor Cissie, still alive, running around the cellar with a bisected head, trying to pull the axe out while Poe basically just panics and does nothing to help until she seemingly drops dead. It comes out of nowhere (I’ve read the short, knew it happened and was still taken by surprise) and is so ridiculously violent, it is quite a shock since up until now it has been a relatively tame episode by Masters of Horror standards.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that ‘The Black Cat’ is some of Stuart Gordons best work. It is a slower burn than his more famous horror output, although not without its explosively gruesome moments. The period setting is a nice change of pace and looks great on screen, and it feels like a bigger budget production than it truly is. The real MVP of the episode however is Jeffrey Combs, who spends much of the episode as the only character on screen (a writer’s life is a solitary one after all). He throws himself into the role and is a joy to watch. The whole episode, in fact, was a joy to watch and this stands out to me as one of the most watchable and underrated of the run.

Join me next time as I’ll be looking at episode twelve of the second season, Peter Medak’s ‘The Washingtonians’. See you then!

If you missed any of Richard's previous Revisting The Masters of Horror articles, you can find links to them all here on our handy landing page

THE MASTERS OF HORROR

Richard is an avid reader and fan of all things horror. He supports Indie horror lit via Twitter (@RickReadsHorror) and reviews horror in all its forms for several websites including Horror Oasis and Sci Fi and Scary