English Title: Two Evil Eyes
ADC Films
Starring: Harvey Keitel, Madeleine Potter, Sally Kirkland
Directed by: Dario Argento & George A. Romero
Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!
Synopsis: The retelling of two classic Edgar Allan Poe tales from famed Italian director Dario Argento. The first segment, The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar, was co-directed with George Romero and the second, The Black Cat, was directed by Argento. Our interest is in the second story, of course, another version of Poe’s The Black Cat. Roderick Usher (Harvey Keitel) is a crime scene photographer whose is being tormented by his girlfriend’s new black cat.
Featured Feline: The female black cat in question (whose name remains a secret throughout) is taken in by Roderick’s peaceful girlfriend Annabel (Madeleine Potter). The cat first shows up in Roderick’s dark room where it’s clear there will be animosity between the two.
The cat doesn’t like Roderick at all, and maybe for good reason! They have several encounters before Roderick decides to photograph the cat for a new book he is compiling.
Kitty Carnage Warning! Well, there are several, as is usual in this particular tale. Roderick strangles the cat with his bare hands for his photo shoot. His girlfriend is deeply depressed after the cat disappears and then shocked when she sees the cover of her boyfriend’s new book. She decides then and there to leave him.
In the meantime, Roderick visits a bar where the bartender Eleonora (Sally Kirkland) has found a black cat with the same white markings as Annabel’s cat.
Roderick takes it home and sees a hangman’s noose in the markings. He then tries to strangle the cat again. Poor Annabel is killed while trying to save the cat from him. The rest of the film plays out like the story with some strange twists at the end. For instance, the cat bursts through the wall where Annabel has been entombed and is killed yet again by Roderick.
So when the detectives discover Annabel it isn’t the black cat inside the wall with her but some weird mutant kittens that have been feeding on her flesh!
There is a message at the end of the film assuring the audience that no cats were harmed during the making of the film. In fact puppetry and animatronics were used for the more violent scenes and it’s actually pretty impressive! That and Harvey Keitel’s performance place this version up there with one of the more interesting ones, however the changes to the end really didn’t add much to the story.
Final Mewsings: How many ways can people reinvent this story for the big screen?
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