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We glance again at one among Combs’ most underrated performances bringing the grasp of the macabre to life.
Appearing is an artwork kind, and behind each iconic character is an artist expressing themselves. Welcome to The Nice Performances, a recurring column exploring the artwork behind a few of cinema’s finest roles. On this entry, Jacob Trussell explores Jeffrey Combs’ memorable efficiency as Edgar Allan Poe in Stuart Gordon’s The Black Cat.
Regardless of being a gargantuan determine within the horror style, we not often see Edgar Allan Poe’s life dramatized for the display screen. Poe, as a personality, has actually appeared in a lot of movies, tv reveals, and theatrical productions. Usually, although, he’s only a supporting character (The Pale Blue Eye) or a comic book gimmick (Monkeybone). For a person whose work – and life – was full of torment and tragedy, it’s somewhat shocking. You’d think about his struggles with habit and destitution would have been extra totally mined for cinematic gold.
Most frequently, when Poe’s life has been the topic of a movie or a tv present, it’s strained by the lens of his tales. Simply take a look at the 1915 silent movie The Raven or the 2012 John Cusack-led film, additionally known as The Raven. Nonetheless, the most effective of the bunch in my e-book is Stuart Gordon’s adaptation of The Black Cat for the tv collection Masters of Horror, starring his frequent collaborator, Jeffrey Combs. They take Poe’s well-known story of alcoholism and quasi-supernatural revenge and embed it with parts of Poe’s actuality. Poe himself was an alcoholic, getting on and off the wagon all through his life. In Poe’s story, the narrator admits to the disintegration of his life “by the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance.” The story successfully reads as an admission of Poe’s personal guilt over his incapability to quell his habit.
Many Poe-influenced movies actually lean into the darker edges of his life. However few try and confront Poe’s alcoholism in any substantial approach. That is what makes Gordon and Combs’ work on The Black Cat so worthwhile. Not solely does it do a high quality job mixing Poe’s actuality and fiction. However Combs successfully performs the struggles of habit in methods which are startlingly relatable. Particularly to anybody who’s ever come nose to nose with alcoholism.
The very first thing you’ll discover in Combs’ efficiency is clear. He’s hidden behind a slightly massive piece of prosthetics: a giant ol’ pretend nostril. However it helps Combs, the actor, fully fade into his character. It’s uncanny how a lot he resembles Poe’s well-known daguerreotype you’ll have seen on any mud jacket of his tales. However the limitations the make-up could have on his efficiency doesn’t cease him from being unmistakably emotive. He employs refined bodily gestures and expressions – his forehead furrowing, his gaze casting down – to easily convey Poe’s palpable sense of hysteria.
That mentioned, it’s nonetheless onerous to not see Herbert West in all the things that Combs does. Nonetheless, as Poe, he suppresses the neurotic tics we affiliate together with his most beloved efficiency. These tendencies, although, don’t absolutely vanish beneath his prosthetics. He’s in a position to retain the nervous vitality we count on from his performances, he simply retains it proper underneath Poe’s pores and skin. It makes even the tiniest of gestures really feel like it’s exploding with an vitality of genuine ache. And even when this fictionalized model of Poe begins to crack up, Combs’ vitality doesn’t rocket to the celebs. It burrows into the earth. As he violently roars at his editor or a barkeep, the fad appears to erupt from a pent-up place deep inside him. A spot that he makes an attempt to appease – and drown – with alcohol.
Not like how he’s depicted within the episode, Poe wasn’t often known as a violent individual. However he was a textbook case of alcoholism. All through his life, he vacillated between intervals of onerous consuming to stone-cold sobriety and again once more. Combs handles Poe’s alcoholic mannerisms with grace. He waxes between an efficient portrayal of the uncontrollable nature of an addict and his personal model of finely-crafted cheesiness.
Certain, his slurred speech could really feel melodramatically affected at instances. However he additionally effortlessly conveys the drooping, unfocused expression you’ll have seen in each obliterated drunk individual’s eyes. However in Combs’ palms, he makes use of this dead-pan expression to be extra than simply the face of a blacked-out drunk. As a result of Comb’s Poe hides behind these unfixed eyes a sense of deep resignation together with his lot in life. That Combs can categorical all of it by a face coated in make-up, and relaxed by liters of imaginary booze, makes the deep feelings he stirs within the viewers all of the extra spectacular.
When his spouse says she feels culpable for his consuming, slightly than an overwrought expression, Combs conveys an virtually imperceptible revulsion. His eyes shortly dart away from hers as his gaze sullenly dips downwards. Combs doesn’t want to inform the viewers that Poe is ashamed for us to sense it in his incapability to fulfill his spouse’s eyes. Regardless that Poe says that he guarantees to cease consuming, there’s a sense of regret in Combs’ face. It’s one which tells the viewers Combs’ Poe has made a promise he is aware of is destined to be damaged.
And Poe breaks it virtually immediately after he discovers his pet chicken crushed to close dying. It ought to be famous that after the blood begins flowing – and oh boy, is there blood – the episode shortly departs from Poe’s actual life and goes straight into the narrative of his quick story, The Black Cat. Poe didn’t really kill a bunch of animals earlier than unintentionally axing his personal spouse. Blame that on the unnamed narrator within the authentic story.
However Poe’s precise struggles with consuming nonetheless aligned neatly with the thematic by line of The Black Cat’s cautionary story on habit. And it’s in these scenes, the place the 2 worlds collide, that a few of Combs’ finest moments shine by.
As he approaches his dying chicken, an expression of abject pity and heartache flashes throughout his face. However as he involves phrases with what he should do, we see Combs lick his lips. It’s a gesture we noticed in an earlier drunken barroom scene. And right here we all know precisely what it means as his gaze falls in direction of a decanter on the bar. He’s utilizing his ache as permission to interrupt his promise and down a glass of liquor to calm his nerves. However even with the liquid braveness, Combs nonetheless reveals us wave on wave of emotion as Poe closes his eyes and crushes the chicken. It’s unhappiness and despair, not only for having to kill this poor animal, however for the profound sense of loss that appears to linger in each nook of his life.
Whereas this episode of Mick Garris’s TV present flew comparatively underneath the radar, it germinated an thought within the heads of Gordon, Combs, and screenwriter Dennis Paoli. They spun out their exploration of Poe’s life right into a one-man present, Nevermore: An Night With Edgar Allan Poe. It first premiered in Los Angeles earlier than transferring to numerous venues throughout america. The present presents itself as an educational lecture by Poe, the place the viewers hears tales of his life whereas the poet interweaves recitations of his most well-known items of literature. And as he recites his poetry, the viewers watches him get progressively and progressively drunk.
Whereas the present shouldn’t be at the moment touring, there’s a five-minute sizzle reel out there on-line that reinforces the ability of Combs’ efficiency. He has an uncanny potential to fully disappear into his model of Poe. He could toe a skinny line between efficient realism and stage theatricality. Nonetheless, he nonetheless manages to imbue mournful authenticity right into a portrait of one among America’s biggest – and most tortured – literary minds.
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