Back before Dario Argento finished up his Three Mother’s Trilogy with the final installment, MOTHER OF TEARS, his buddy Luigi Cozzi (CONTAMINATION) took a stab at it in an attempt to give all of us horror fans closure. It’s said that Daria Nicolodi herself went to Cozzi to work with her script for the final movie but later recanted but allowed him to use some of her ideas. That result is the movie we know as THE BLACK CAT, aka DEMONS 6: DE PROFUNDIS. No, it has nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe nor Bava’s film series, though to be fair, the latter title actually has relevance to the plot.
The movie revolves around Anne (Florence Guerin), a horror actress, and her director husband Marc (Urbano Barberini) who have just had a baby boy. Marc and his screenwriter buddy have come up with the perfect movie to do next, a film that will finish the Three Mothers trilogy that Argento started. With two of the mothers done, they are going to the third, but not Mater Lachrymarum. They’re going with Levana, who is actually a Roman goddess that Thomas De Quincey wrote about and gave companions in the Three Sorrows. I guess if you’re going to go for it, you go big. Anne, of course, will be playing Levana in the movie, much to the annoyance of her friend Nora (Caroline Munro), who feels she deserves the part. Oh and she’s also cheating on her husband with Marc, who is in turn being unfaithful to Anne.
However, when they go to get a copy of Suspiria de Profondis from a psychic (as one does), she warns them to change the name from Levana to anything else, as Levana was a real witch and just by saying her name they run the risk of awakening her. Of course Marc thinks this is nonsense and refuses. When Anne starts having visions and nightmares of the pustule-covered Levana and losing her grip on reality, it seems that the psychic might have been on to something. Not only that, but it seems that Levana will settle for Anne’s son if she can’t have Anne, and it doesn’t matter who she has to kill to make that happen. Now Anne has to fight for her family and the fate of the world against a witch that is more powerful than anyone imagined.
THE BLACK CAT might not be the perfect ending to the trilogy, but damn if it isn’t a fun ride. Cozzi takes us on a lurid, blood-soaked trip filled with exploding bodies and Argento-inspired lighting as we learn all about Levana and her attempt to enter the world of the living once more. I appreciate the meta take on the Three Mothers instead of just slotting a quickie into Argento’s world. It allows him to play in that sandbox but gives him the safety of not making it a definitive entry. That’s even more apparent by choosing Levana instead of the Mother of Tears as the main antagonist. I would have appreciated a little more commitment but he was friends with Argento so probably didn’t want to piss him off and it let Argento do his own thing years later for better or worse. And the gaslighting of Anne by Levana gives the affair a PHANTASM-esque feel as you never quite know what is real or just a nightmare.
Can’t say I’ve seen the cast in anything save for Munro and Barberini but they’re game for all of the goopy and weird things going down. And weird it is. You have glowing eyes showing up, glowing windows, the aforementioned exploding bodies, talking corpses, floating fetuses and cosmic shots that wouldn’t be out of place in THE MANITOU, illusory repairmen and children, cars ramming through buildings and so much more. Oh and Michele Soavi shows up in a cameo as the director of the film that Anne is working on in the beginning of the movie.
The effects are effective and disgusting, with the exploding bodies reminiscent of Cozzi’s CONTAMINATION. Franco Casagni (THE CHURCH, PAGANINI HORROR) does a great job with them. Levana herself is quite hideous, with all of the pustules growing on her face and clawed hands, as if she were the embodiment of pestilence. Those who are in search of gore with their witchcraft will find plenty of it here.
THE BLACK CAT (which by the way was mandated by the distributor as they were working on a series of Edgar Allan Poe movies so made Cozzi name it that and shoehorn in some shots of a black cat) wasn’t quite what I expected for an ending to the trilogy, even an unofficial one. Outside of the hues that show up at times, it feels like it owes less to Argento and more to Fulci, but it works all the same though I will admit it is confusing at times. I feel like the ending was a bit rushed and gets us to a spot it didn’t earn as Anne gets magical powers that weren’t really hinted at before. Were they given to her by the apparition with an orb she keeps seeing? It feels like something from another script that was worked in. The concept of a white witch is used in 2007’s MOTHER OF TEARS so maybe that was an idea Nicolodi had used that made its way in? Or was it just happenstance?
Either way, it’s a fun film and though it doesn’t hit the highs of SUSPIRIA or INFERNO, it’s a fun movie that plays in the sandbox and manages to not break any of the toys along the way. Not quite as successful a meta endeavor as THE NEW NIGHTMARE but worth checking out for fans of the Three Mothers Trilogy.
