An early effort by 29-year-old director Edgar G. Ulmer, who later made stylish films despite being hampered by tiny budgets, the film teamed Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi for the first time. Part of Universal Pictures’ wave of horror movies that was kicked off by Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, The Black Cat dispensed with Poe’s original story -- Ulmer said it was “not a story you can dramatize” -- banking on the title and Poe’s reputation to sell the picture, which ended up as a box office success.