Based on a famous story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Black Cat tells the tale of Poe himself who's short on cash and has no ideas at all, or what you'd call a writer's block. Then a black cat shows up and starts tormenting the poor writer, but maybe it's not as bad as it at first seems and maybe the black cat will inspire the writer to write one of his most famous stories ever.
In The Black Cat, Stuart Gordon has Mr. Re-Animator play Edgar Allan Poe, and Combs delivers a brilliant performance as the somewhat creepy-looking writer. Even though I don't really have any expectations for what to come in the series anymore, I gotta admit that I had some expectations for this episode since it was Gordon's turn and for him having cast Jeffrey Combs to be in it. In this 11th episode of the MoH series, Stuart Gordon has turned one of the old days horror masters Edgar Allan Poe's writings into film which works extremely well. What added an old, and I guess "Poe-ish" feel to it was that the film was shot in faded color which almost made it look like it had been shot in black & white - something that made the film have this old look to it which fits the very concept of what we're dealing with here perfectly.
Stuart Gordon was responsible for last season's Dreams in the Witch House which I actually did like quite a lot even though I've heard a lot of people complaining about it as well. Anyway, while Witch House might've been all right, The Black Cat is by far much better and most of it thanks to Jeffrey Combs for portraying Eddie Poe in such an excellent way. At times there, I tended to forget that it was Combs that I was watching; he looks a bit different and while that of course helps, what was the main reason for that was because of how he really captured the character he was portraying.
 
While Poe may have scared folks with his writings a long time ago, times have changed quite a lot since then and I was fearing that either they would go with that (I'm gonna use the word again here) Poe-ish kind of horror which probably wouldn't have worked too well. Or, that Gordon would add a too comical side to how the story would be told, but thankfully, neither or this did happen. What we get here is to follow Poe who is short on cash and is trying to expand his credit at the local inn/bar while his young wife is laying in bed at home and is being terminally ill. Her conditions keeps getting worse for each day that goes by and their black cat, Pluto, is constantly in Poe's way.
His only way to make money is to write a fabolous tale, but unfortunately the man is suffering from writer's block. So he keeps drinking, his wife's condition keeps getting worse and the cat is more annoying than ever. But there's much more to it than that, but since I don't want to spoil anything for potential viewers, I'm not gonna say any more.. just watch it, it's definitely worth it. The very look of the episode is very cool indeed and has this gothic kinda touch to it, and while I figured Gordon was gonna add some humour to it all, there's really none to be found as it's more quite the sad kinda story which works very very well. Just don't let your cat see it.
The Black Cat is the kind of film that has the very story in focus and that's always much appreciated. Not too much gore to be found, but the little that is there still feels somewhat massive and both looks and works tremendously well. So far, The Black Cat is definitely one of the better episodes, even though I'm sure that is a very individual thing.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Black Cat, The
MOVIE YEAR: 2007
DIRECTOR: Stuart Gordon
WRITING CREDITS: Stuart Gordon, Dennis Paoli
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Jeffrey Combs, Patrick Gallagher, Christopher Heyerdahl
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 60 min
RATING: 9/10
Masters of Horror (S02E11): The Black Cat Website/IMDB Click here
Masters of Horror (S02E11): The Black Cat Trailer Click here
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