The Black Cat (1934)

Edgar Ulmer directed The Black Cat for Universal in 1934. It was a huge hit and it should have moved him up to making big budget movies, but it turned out he was sleeping with the wife of the studio head's nephew, so that put a damper on his career and he went to work in the poverty row studios.

I'd never seen The Black Cat, but with all the terrible 1930's B movies I've watched---horror movies without horror, science fiction without science, thrillers without thrills, westerns that were just idiotic---I thought, how good could this thing be? 

I did finally watch it and it was beautiful, just brilliant. Set in Europe about men traumatized by World War One. 

The movie Ed Wood brought up the rivalry between Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. The Black Cat made it clear that Lugosi was the better man.

Available on the Criterion Channel.