For an anthology series this is above the usual standard of fare. Part of that comes from three talents - one dead(Edgar Allan Poe) and two living - director Stuart Gordon and actor Jeffrey Combs. Poe is the central character here with his wife living in chilly Philadelphia when news comes that his wife is ill with TB or consumption. They have a plethora of pets: a goldfish in a large bowl, a little caged bird, and an omnipresent black cat. Poe is in dire financial straits and has reached bottom both professionally and personally spending all his time in the local alehouse stone cold drunk(at least that is his ultimate ambition). though some of the story does have liberal does of factual matter fused with vibrant storytelling, one should not confuse much of this with reality. As another reviewer noted, it is a slow starter. A real slow starter. But it does have a good payoff at close, and Stuart Gordon directs with precision and depth of detail in both settings and characterization. The real prize goes to Jeffrey Combs for being nearly unidentifiable in his role as the master storyteller. Kudos to all concerned.

Middling entry in the erratic TV series, purporting to illustrate the conception of the much-filmed Edgar Allan Poe short story as a hallucination experienced by the famously troubled author! Given director Gordon's involvement, it features some gross-out gore: Poe's wife suffers from TB, so she is seen spurting pools of blood throughout, while at the climax he attacks the titular feline (after having gouged out one of its eyes) with an axe…but only manages to graphically split the head of his spouse – who, unfortunately, gets in the way – in two! Though it was inevitable that Gordon's frequent muse Jeffrey Combs would be assigned the leading role here, it is also remarkable how well he is made to resemble him! This episode, then, is interesting in what it tries to do and fairly stylish into the bargain (in view of the period setting) but, alas, the central plot and its twist ending have grown stale with the constant retelling!

Some directors needs to show a cat been mutilated for scare. "The black cat" is the worst episode of this series, I think is tie with "the screwfly solution" (Joe Dante), another propanga, women murder instead of animals (maybe Dante thinks a woman is an animal because of that he wants to murder them. "The black cat" shows the worst of Edgar Allan Poe (father of the suspense) and the worst of the human, kill cowardly innocent animals. If you're an animal lover don't watch this episode, besides it's not good with an empty plot, it is humiliating and shows how a poor innocent animal is mutilated, tortured and finally kill. Stuart Gordon I think you did that before, you have s h i t in your head for show this. I'm excuse for my English.

I suppose any film dipping into the tormented private life of Edgar Allan Poe would drive most to drink, since his poetry and stories were not too far removed from his personal reality. In that regard, Stuart Gordon's second-season "Masters of Horror" episode delivers in spades, with Jeffrey Combs embodying all the depression and madness that afflicted Poe with great pathos. Unfortunately, the desaturated color scheme makes the film visually unappealing (imagine a Hammer production without the bold, vibrant colors), and the overall plot progresses at a slow, melodramatic pace; there are shocks, yes, but no real scares. Actually, some of the details divulged by Gordon, Combs and others on the DVD "making-of" featurette are illuminating, and gave me a bit more respect for what the filmmakers achieved (in a sense, 'The Black Cat' has much in common with E. Elias Merhige's "Shadow of the Vampire"); in retrospect, blending details of Poe's life with his fiction is a neat concept, and the script (co-written by Gordon and Dennis Paoli) blurs the line quite well. 'The Black Cat,' despite its deliberate pace and lack of out-there humor, has a good anchor in Combs (who looks uncannily like Poe) and a few bits of ironic humor; additionally, the last 10 minutes are by turns touching, shocking, and hopeful--the first time in a long time where I've seen a dream sequence applied with such skill and gratification.