The Black Cat is director Edgar G. Ulmer's masterpiece, and only the commercial considerations of its day prevent it from ranking higher on lists of the greatest films of the 20th century. The story operates on multiple levels, most deeply as a parable for post-WWI Europe. Unlike such anti-war films as All Quiet on the Western Front, which seem to have all the answers worked out before the first scene, The Black Cat presents a series of morally ambiguous metaphors that undermine the story's conventional ending. At its most basic level, The Black Cat works as a great horror film. The Bauhaus-inspired set design is uncomfortably disquieting, and Boris Karloff's performance creates one of the screen's most distinct and credible villains. The monsters in The Black Cat are human, unlike in other horror films of the era, where viewers could leave the theater and be quite sure that they would never be terrorized by a mummy or a werewolf. And while the audience understands that Bela Lugosi is the de facto representation of good, there are uncomfortable shortcomings in his character that hinder the audience's comfort. Regrettably, Ulmer felt the commercial need to include various elements of comic relief, and the stiff, uninteresting performance of David Manners as Peter Allison is a major liability. Nonetheless, in its best moments, The Black Cat is as powerful as any film of its era, and it represents the creative direction in which horror films of the 1930s were headed until censorship and other pressures forced them back into the mainstream.