"BLACK CAT"--Keith's Memorial

In an attempt to create a super bloodcurdling picture both Dracula's Bela Lugosi and Frankenstein's Boris Karloff have been thrown together that two monsters are better than one does not work out in this instance. Displaying a remarkable lack of originality in terrorizing devices and effects, the picture is hardly one to make children scream and women faint. Even more important, the plot is so complicated and incoherent that all sense of sustained terrifying suspense is virtually lost. Two such master-monsters as Lugosi and Karloff deserve a better vehicle than "The Black Cat" when they meet to match wits.

In the much-used setting of an cerie castle, isolated in an Austrian wood with an atmosphere of heavily shadowed lighting and a background of student music, the two horror merchants settle many long-standing scores concerning wars and wives. Panels slide, black cats stalk, mysterious servants silently do their masters' bidding, and strong wills vie with each other. The loosely connected story fails to give even a logical order to the plot, and the result is an unconvincing succession of almost unrelated incidents designed to strike terror to the hearts of men. Even the "black cat" has nothing to do with the general action, but is an extraneous importation from Edgar Allan Poe, used only to give the piece a title.

Even the climax, when Lugoal skins Karloff alive with a scalpel, has little effect on the audience. In fact the only people who are bothered at all are the innocent bystanders in the play.

In "Strictly Dynamite," Jimmy Durante is a radio comedian. It is the same Durante, still "de tool of a beautiful dame," an if you like his unchanging technique you will be thoroughly satisfield with this picture.