#76: Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror
A collection of miscellaneous Edgar Allen Poe tales
This review was originally posted to Twitter on March 21st, 2019.
Initial release: 1962
Director: Roger Corman
Midway through Roger Corman’s cycle of film adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe, and after the weak The Premature Burial, Corman continued to experiment, and with Tales of Terror, he gives us an anthology film of some of Poe’s tales that were perhaps too short even for Corman to stretch into an entire film. Splitting the film into three stories based on Poe is probably a wise move — as we’ve seen in Corman’s other Poe films, sometimes shorter is better. Perhaps The Premature Burial for example would have been better as a short segment rather stretched out to 80 minutes. And as usual with Corman, the relationship to the original text by Poe can be quite loose, though the basic thrust is intact. Perhaps the most striking change is the middle segment, “The Black Cat,” is actually a comedic take (while also borrowing from Cask of Amontillado.)
What can I say about Corman’s Poe films that I haven’t already said a million times? He’s still the cheapest man in Hollywood, reusing sets, props, actors, scripts, whatever he can wring every last cent out of. But there are a few things noteworthy in this film.
All of the film’s three segments star Vincent Price, of course, but Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone also appear in the second and third segment, respectively. Each segment is introduced by Price in voiceover, ruminating on the moment of death, with visuals such as a beating heart, or dripping blood, against a black background, and the sound of a heart beating. Aside from being visually striking, it also evokes The Telltale Heart. Each segment is also bookended by the first and last frames being reproduced in a lurid sketch drawing. This gives it a sort of comic book flavor that evokes nothing so much as Tales from the Crypt and similar comics of the 50s. The ending credits are an absolute delight, with each segment given its own dramatis personae, each actor shown in a lurid monochrome screenprint portrait. And while some soundtracks have been better than others in the Poe cycle, it’s absolutely on point in this film, especially in the first segment, “Morella,” driving up suspense and really making scary what would otherwise have been a goofy scene.
Having seen all of the Corman/Poe films now, this is one of the better ones. It’s a good exploration of how shorter stories are better suited for anthologies rather than trying to drag them out for a full-length. And hey, it’s got Peter Lorre drunkenly singing The Raven.
