Part of Midnight Movies: Bad Kitty! See also: HOUSE (Hausu) (Sat, Mar 23 at Midnight)

Italy’s own “Godfather of Gore” goes Gothic! Lucio Fulci (ZOMBIE, THE GATES OF HELL) gruesomely reimagines the classic Edgar Allen Poe tale with Patrick Magee (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE) and Mimsy Farmer (THE PERFUME OF THE LADY IN BLACK) in tow. When a young couple goes missing in a sleepy English village, Scotland Yard Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck, THE BEYOND) is brought in to assist on the case. But what starts off as a routine investigation turns into a murder inquiry when the couple are found dead in mysterious circumstances.

Fusing a classically creepy atmosphere with more decidedly visceral elements that are the hallmark of Fulci’s films, THE BLACK CAT is a too-often overlooked and underrated entry in the Italian master filmmaker’s canon. (Synopsis courtesy of American Genre Film Archive)

“Fulci's classiest horror movie... if that's a superlative that can be applied to a movie which, in the first five minutes, has a guy smash through the windshield of his car and then catch fire and burn to death on the hood.” —Laird Jimenez, Letterboxd