"Do You Know What I Am Going To Do To You? I'm Going To Skin You Alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                                        Forget "The Silence Of The Lambs," and the "SAW" movies, darlings.  When Bela Lugosi speaks these lines  to Boris Karloff in  the 1934 "The Black Cat,"  they are delivered, and enacted  by,  two  such seasoned horror pros,  it was as though these generic words had been written by Shakespeare!

                                        And when  Lugosi strips Karloff bare chested,  and ties  him to an S and  M cross--on camera, in 1934!--and the deed is done is shadows,  it is more  haunting than those aforementioned recent films.

                                          As I said earlier,  this film is  both  subliminal  and  understated, making this more a horror film than anything more graphic.

                                            It still amazes me how this got past the censors.

                                             Darlings, I am  telling  you, what a gem!  So seldom shown, but  one of  Universal's underrated  masterworks.

                                              And it paved the way for the studio's true masterwork, the following year, "The Bride Of Frankenstein."

                                                 How come  Thirties  women never wanted  to  copy Elsa Lanchester's electric hairstyle???????????????????