The Black Cat [VHS]
Edgar Ulmer's baroque masterpiece is the pinnacle of expressionism of Hollywood, a beautiful melding of gothic antiquity and modernity in the shadow of World War I. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff square off in their  finest film together as decades-old nemeses who meet for a fateful showdown on the very battlefield where Karloff's devilish dark priest sacrificed his own army and framed Lugosi's good doctor for the crime. Karloff plays the most evil character of his career, a mesmerizingly demonic architect (inspired by the notorious real-life Satanist Aleister Crowley) who stole Lugosi's wife and daughter and built his shrinelike home, a stunning piece of Bauhaus-inspired glass and steel architecture, on the graves of his victims. His intensity and hypnotic understatement is a revelation, a genuine monster in human guise far more insidious and evil than the creatures of Universal's more famous horror classics. Lugosi delivers his finest performance ever as a Van Helsing-like hero whose simmering hatred and rage finally boils over into madness and sadistic revenge. A pair of silly American honeymooners become but two more pawns in their game of vengeance. John Mescall, who shot the gorgeousBride of Frankenstein, beautifully delivers eerie unease and sinister imagery, from the Caligari-like black church of slanting beams and slashing shadows to the tomb of glass-lined caskets displaying victims held in suspended animation. One of the finest horror films to emerge from Universal's golden age of horror.--Sean Axmaker