 |
| Bethany Ruthven |
Good
evening, darlings, and thank you for reading. We are almost to the
end of our little Halloween soiree, and today on The MonsterGrrls’
Thir13en For Halloween, we will discuss one of my favorite writers,
the revered Edgar Allan Poe. And honestly, who hasn’t brought out
“The Raven” or some of the Tales Of Mystery And
Imagination for perusing during
the Halloween season? But specifically, we’re going to talk about
Poe’s connection to a celebrated horror filmmaker: Roger Corman,
who directed a cycle of eight films based on Poe’s tales from 1960
to 1965, most of which starred Vincent Price.
 |
| The author |
Poe himself, of course, is our first topic.
Born in Boston in 1809, Poe’s family was abandoned by his father,
and his mother died soon after. Formally adopted by John and Frances
Allan of Richmond, VA, Poe would often clash with his father over the
cost of his education and his frequent gambling debts. He enrolled
in the University of Virginia but left after a year due to lack of
money, and after a quarrel with his father, he enlisted in the Army
in 1827 under an assumed name. The same year would see the beginning
of Poe’s literary career with a self-published
book called Tamerlane
And Other Poems, credited only
to “A Bostonian.” From there, Poe would ultimately switch to
prose, and write the tales that he is best-known for, including “The
Pit And The Pendulum,” “Hop-Frog,” “The Masque Of The Red
Death,” “The Murders In The Rue Morgue,” and others. Poe’s
life ended in 1849, with the ultimate cause of his death being a
mystery: all known medical records concerned with his death are lost.
The tales of Poe, however, would
survive to inspire future generations of authors, giving rise to the
modern horror and mystery genres. In 1960, the film studio American
International Pictures expressed interest in turning Poe’s story
“The Fall of The House Of Usher” into a feature film. Roger
Corman, who had been asked to direct two black-and-white low-budget
horror flicks for AIP, convinced them to let him do “Usher”
instead, and give him a higher budget than normal, which allowed
Corman to film in widescreen and color and develop lavish movie sets.
Celebrated genre author
Richard Matheson provided the
script, and Vincent Price was
brought on board to star as the languishing Roderick Usher. The
film, titled House Of Usher,
was a hit for AIP, and Corman, Price and Matheson were tapped soon
afterward to create a film version of The Pit And The
Pendulum in 1961.
Another hit ensued for Corman
and AIP, and the Poe cycle began in earnest.
 |
| House Of Usher |
 |
| The Pit And The Pendulum |
The next film, The
Premature Burial (1962),
starred Ray Milland, as Price was unavailable. Corman’s
 |
| The Premature Burial |
 |
| Tales Of Terror |
The fourth
film,
Tales Of Terror (1962),
was an anthology film that heralded the return of Vincent Price to
the series and showcased three stories, all based on works of Poe.
“Morella” told the story of a woman (Maggie Pierce) returning to
her childhood home to find that her father (Vincent Price) has
performed a rite of witchcraft to allow her to swap bodies with that
of her dead mother (Leona Gage), so that her mother can live again.
“The Black Cat” combined elements of “The Black Cat” and “The
Cask Of Amontillado” and showcased Price, Peter Lorre, and Joyce
Jameson in the story of the cuckolded Monsieur Herringbone (Lorre)
who exacts his revenge upon pretentious wine-taster Fortunato
(Price) and his wayward wife
(Jameson) by walling them up in his basement wine-cellar. However,
Herringbone eventually gets his when the screeching of his wife’s
black cat (who was also
walled up in the basement) reveals his misdeed. (You
never can trust those cats, you know.) The final tale was a reading
of “The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar,” about a dying man
(Price) who employs a hypnotist (Basil Rathbone) to put him into
trances to relieve his suffering, but ends up trapped between life
and death when Carmichael refuses to release him from his trance so
that he may finally die. Price,
Lorre, Rathbone and Jameson would all eventually be reunited for
Corman’s 1963 horror-comedy The Comedy Of Terrors.
 |
| The Raven |
1963’s The Raven,
while not exactly a filmed version of Poe’s poem, did borrow
elements from the poem to tell its story. Craven, a widowed sorcerer
(Vincent Price) is visited by a raven who turns out to be a
transformed wizard, Dr. Bedlo (Peter Lorre), who tells him that he
has seen the ghost of Craven’s wife at the castle of the evil Dr.
Scarabus (Boris Karloff). Joined by Craven’s daughter Estelle
(Olive Sturgess) and her paramour, Bedlo’s son Rexford (Jack
Nicholson in an early role), the pair travel to Scarabus’s castle
and discover that Scarabus indeed has Craven’s wife (Hazel Court),
who is aiding him in a plot
to gain Craven’s magical secrets. Having enjoyed the comedy of
“The Black Cat” in Tales Of Terror,
Corman desired to make a
completely comic Poe film; hence The Raven
is neither fish nor fowl, as it were.
 |
| "Edgar Allan Poe's" The Haunted Palace |
1963 would also see the release of
The Haunted Palace. While
regarded as part of the Poe cycle by some since it uses the title of
Poe’s poem, the story of the film is actually derived from H. P.
Lovecraft’s novella The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward,
making THP
a bit of an outlier in the Poe cycle. The
eponymous Ward (Vincent
Price), the great-great grandson of suspected warlock Joseph Curwen
(also Price), returns to his relative’s ancestral home in
Arkham, Massachusetts with
his wife Anne (Debra Paget) to claim his inheritance. Because of
Curwen’s shenanigans with sacrifices to ancient pagan gods and
such, the strangely deformed
townsfolk are naturally
suspicious and hostile toward the couple, but they are encouraged to
stay by the palace caretaker Simon (Lon Chaney Jr., of werewolf fame)
who remarks how much Ward
resembles Curwen’s portrait. Obsession blooms, and it isn’t long
before poor Mr. Ward is carrying on Great-Great-Granddad’s work,
dragging out the old Necronomicon, resurrecting old cronies, and
exacting revenge on the town of Arkham. The eventual denouement
results in the defeat of the evil threat and the destruction of the
Haunted Palace via the same stock footage of Usher’s burning home,
which the ever-thrifty Corman used and reused repeatedly (along with
reused and redressed sets) as a cost-cutting measure.
 |
| The Masque Of The Red Death |
1964 brought The Masque Of
The Red Death, stylistically on
a par with House Of Usher.
Combining elements of Poe’s story “Hop-Frog” as a subplot
within the overall tale of Red Death,
we see the tale of hedonistic
and unscrupulous nobleman Prince Prospero (Vincent Price), who
responds to the threat of plague in a local village by ordering the
village burnt down and having several members of nobility sequestered
at his castle, which is stocked with food, wine and entertainments,
some of which are provided by two dwarf dancers, Esmerelda (Verina
Greenlaw) and Hop-Toad (Skip Martin). As Hop-Toad enacts revenge on
the boorish Alfredo (Patrick Magee) for striking Esmerelda by
tricking him into dressing as an ape, soaking his costume with brandy
and setting it aflame (as per the tale) and Prospero prepares
sacrifices to Satan, the Red Death (an uncredited John Westbrook) appears, and the
disbelieving Prospero is
led into a danse macabre as
Red Death claims Prospero and all his company. Charles Beaumont, the
well-known contributor to Twilight Zone, provided
the script, with R. Wright Campbell working in the Hop-Frog subplot.
 |
| Tomb Of Ligeia |
The Poe cycle would come to a close
in 1965 with Tomb Of Ligeia,
telling the story of widower Verden Fell (Vincent Price) who is
haunted by the memories of his blasphemous
and atheistic wife Ligeia (Elizabeth Shepherd) to the point that he
impulsively marries a woman (Elizabeth Shepherd) who not only
resembles Ligeia but is betrothed to his friend Christopher Gough
(John Westbrook). Madness and mayhem are the order of the day as
Fell, troubled by nocturnal visions and the presence of a sinister
black cat who may be inhabited by Ligeia’s ghost, succumbs to
distress and resolves to ultimately face his wife’s evil spirit in
a final showdown that could cost him his life. Though
the film does appear to suffer from padding (its corresponding story
is one of Poe’s shortest tales), Tomb Of Ligeia was
a fitting end to the cycle of Poe films, which are still regarded as
stars in both Corman’s and Price’s bodies of work.
And
so we come to the end, alas. Do return soon for our next Tale Of
Unease in The MonsterGrrls’ Thir13en For Halloween, and
don’t tarry, because we are coming to the end, and all this will
be… nevermore!
Regards,
Bethany Ruthven
 |
| Our Mr. Price displays his usual charm, wit and sophistication. We love you, Uncle Vinnie. |
No comments:
Post a Comment