The Black Cat

Dir. Edgar G. Ulmer (1934).
Edgar G. Ulmer brought all his knowledge as a set designer to this gem—a sadistic battle of wills between evil architect Boris Karloff and tormented shrink Bela Lugosi that’s set amid the deco splendor of the mansion of doom that Karloff has constructed over a World War I battlefield. Wildly expressionistic, the movie has nothing to do with the Poe story from which it takes its title and everything to do with Ulmer’s sense of the Nazi menace.

Wed., Oct. 6, 7:30 p.m., 2010