Monkey Business / The Black Cat

This program is part of the screening series Art Deco in the Movies: A Centennial Celebration, presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles.

The Marx Brothers’ third feature, Monkey Business was the first of their anarchic romps to be shot on Paramount’s Hollywood sound stages (previous outings having been shot in Astoria, New York) and its production design seems particularly on display. Stowaways on a New York-bound luxury liner, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo emerge from barrels of kippered herring below deck to escape into an art deco wonderland from the ship’s barber shop and promenades to a dazzling central staircase. The modernist environs prove a perfect backdrop for their manic wit and breakneck zaniness as they evade the ship’s crew and rival gangsters alike.

 35mm, b&w, 77 min. Director: Norman McLeod. Screenwriters: S.J. Perelman, Will B. Johnstone. With: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx.

A modernist mansion rises high into the mists of the Hungarian mountains, its bold lines and minimalist design immediately signaling that The Black Cat isn’t your typical classic horror film. With the slightest nod to Edgar Allen Poe’s short story (there’s a cat, at least!), director Edgar G. Ulmer and screenwriter Peter Rubic pile up terrors like Universal was going out of business. When newlyweds on an Eastern European honeyman find themselves stranded in the mansion, caught up in a blood feud between Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, they bear witness to satanism, necrophilia, mass murder, torture and, of course, ailurophobia. 

35mm, b&w, 65 min. Director: Edgar G. Ulmer. Screenwriter: Peter Ruric. With: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners.