by Ted Davis

Original Title: Unheimliche Geschichten

Also Known As: The Living Dead

Directed by: Richard Oswald

This review contains a Kitty Carnage Warning from rough handling and scruffing!

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Frequently effective mixture of Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson stories which segues from a brisk riff on The Black Cat to an equally loose version of The Suicide Club. Paul Wegener as the intense borderline-crazy inventor Morder performs the dirty work, including a brutal homicide, and is pursued throughout the movie by stubborn investigative reporter Frank Briggs, as played by Harald Paulsen.

Cat Burglar (Scene Stealer): Morder’s ultra-blonde wife Betty (Roma Bahn) sits in a plush chair holding and stroking her large black cat, which is experiencing his only pleasant moments in the picture.

Betty carries the cat downstairs to her husband’s impressive and intimidating laboratory-workshop, and both wife and feline, particularly the feline, are resented strongly by the demented inventor.

Betty wrecks domestic relations even further when she clumsily drops the blameless cat into a pile of complex machinery, which sends Morder into an absolute frenzy.

Kitty Carnage Warning! He grabs the luckless animal by the scruff and begins to shake the poor creature until Betty intervenes, snatching the cat back from him, which incites another round in the ongoing battle between husband and wife.

The connubial contest has been settled — permanently — by the time the cat is next seen, snarling and spitting in an open window, observed by Briggs and his dancer girlfriend (Mary Parker), who are driving back to the city. During this scene a person can be see holding the cat from behind and heaven knows what the person is doing to the cat actor to make it cry out.

After the passage of several days, a concerned Briggs returns to the Morder domicile, accompanied by a handful of policemen, to check on Betty’s whereabouts. An overconfident Morder allows the group to search his home, but his arrogance is his undoing, for when he strikes the brickwork in his workshop with a metal bar, to prove the integrity of the wall, he is answered by the very angry and vocal cat who appears suddenly in a convenient hole among the bricks. After issuing his strong and high-pitched condemnation of Morder’s murderous attack on his friend and protector, the black cat hops from his spot among the brickwork. (It’s actually very apparent that the moody cat was reluctant to make the jump and was pushed from behind.) Briggs and his police companions are shocked to discover Betty’s corpse, highlighted starkly by her blonde hair against the darkness, hidden behind the hastily constructed wall. At this point in story, the cat escapes the movie and further harm.

Final Mewsings: Cats hold grudges against people who hurt them cruelly, and rightfully so.

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