The Black Cat: film vs short story

The Black Cat, film vs short story

This was published by Poe in Saturday Evening Post in 1843 and is considered one of the most terryfing short stories.

This tale starts in the prision, the anonymous narrator relates how his life was destroyed. He was always a good and peaceful person who loved animals so he married a woman who also loved animals. The couple had all types of creatures in their house including Pluto, a black cat.

The man of the story starts to drink and his nature completely changes, he  becomes an aggressive person with his wife and his animals.

One night, this man coming back to home intoxicated decides to cut Pluto's eye with a penknife and days hang up him causing his death.

After a short while, the narrator picks another cat up which looks like Pluto. The man begins to hate this new cat and one day he makes the decision of killing him with an axe but his wife attemps to stop him getting in the middle. However the axe finishes embedded in woman's head causing her death.

Her disappearance makes police thinking about him as the principal suspected. In the police inspection, they go to the basement where they hear noises from the wall within the man had put his wife's cadaver. The police demolishes the wall where they find the corspe and the cat miaowing.

The most famous adaptation of this story was the horror film released in 1934 under the title of The Black Cat performing by Boris Karloff, Béla Lugosi and David Manners. However the film differs in many ways from Edgar's story.

Peter (David Manners) and Joan Allison are honeymooning in a train travel in Budapest where they meet Dr.Vitus Verdegast (Béla Lugosi). These three characters have an accidents and the couple accompany  Verdegast to Hjalmar (BorisKarloff) Poelzig's castle, who is a mysterious person leader of a Satanic cult.

Verdegast wants revenge since Poelzig bertrayed him in WWI what caused Verdegast's detention. While this happened Poelzing married Verdegast's wife and then his daughter whose bodies are kept by Poelzig. Peter and Joan are involved in this revenge.

Thus, as it is shown the film and the story are completely different. There is an allusion of Poe's black cat when Verdegast kills Poelzig's cat, and he has a new cat which is carried while he is observing the women's cadavers in the glass cases. (mysteriousuniverse.org. , “Karloff and Lugosi: ‘The Black Cat’ (1934)- Movie Review”, 2013)

TRAILER : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFi9lxFwrsM

For further information: http://www.shmoop.com/black-cat-poe/literary-devices.html

http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/blackcat.shtml

Reference list:

Rose, Michael. "Karloff and Lugosi: ‘The Black Cat’ (1934)- Movie Review." mysteriousuniverse.org. 29 Nov 2013.  Web. 18 May 2014. <http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2013/11/karloff-and-lugosi-the-black-cat-1934-movie-review/>.