As I noted in my Tales of Terror review, I’ve been skipping around in these Roger Corman/Edgar Allan Poe features based on what I can get my hands on most immediately at any given time. I didn’t have very high hopes for The Tomb of Ligeia, as it’s not a title that I think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about, and its position as the Corman/Poe flick that was the least financially successful (and which thus was the last of these to be made) didn’t bode well. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to see that despite being the last trip to this particular well, the cast and crew clearly still had the juice. 

Verden Fell (Vincent Price) lives alone, save for a single servant, in the attached vicarage of a dilapidated and overgrown abbey. Years before, Fell insisted that his late wife Ligeia be laid to rest on the abbey’s grounds, despite the fact that the priest claims that interring Ligeia among the Christian dead is an insult to them and that her very presence beneath the soil will deconsecrate the holy ground. This seems to have been the case, and Fell lives a solitary life alone amidst a be-cobwebbed rectory, surrounded by recreations of Egyptian archaeological finds and tomb sculptures. That is, until the day that his brooding is interrupted by the sudden arrival of the beautiful Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd), the daughter of a neighboring lord, who became separated from her father’s fox hunt when she was distracted by the abbey. Unfortunately, the sudden appearance of Fell from behind a tree spooks her horse, landing her in a bed of asphodels that grow atop Ligeia’s grave. Despite seemingly being engaged to lifetime friend Christopher Gough (John Westbrook), Rowena is immediately drawn to Fell, and begins seeking him out, slowly drawing him out of his protracted mourning until the two finally wed. When they return from their honeymoon, they find that Fell’s plan to sell the abbey and move on with his life with Rowena has hit a snag; it seems the abbey and the property are both in Ligeia’s name, and because the land straddles two counties, certification of her death fell between the cracks. Legally, Ligeia is still alive and is the owner of the abbey, but Fell is insistent that her body not be disinterred to confirm her death, as he cannot tolerate her tomb being disturbed. 

Now that they’re back at the abbey, Fell begins to behave strangely. Multiple nights, Rowena seeks him out (the two appear to be living in separate quarters since the validity of their marriage may also face legal scrutiny, with Ligeia’s lack of a death certificate potentially annulling their union), only to find his bed empty and Fell himself nowhere to be found. Throughout the film, there has been some implication that Ligeia’s spirit may inhabit a black cat that lurks around the property, as it has on separate occasions slashed Rowena’s face when she was flirting with Fell, lured Rowena into the belfry and then attempted to make her fall by ringing the bell, and generally behaved as if acting upon an unknown motive. At one point, Rowena awakens to find a dead fox in her bed, presumably brought there by the cat, as it had previously made off with her father’s slain fox in an earlier scene, and she finds a saucer of milk next to the bed as well. When she seeks Fell, she finds him on his balcony, with no real sense of where he is, seeming to indicate that he has some kind of sleepwalking issue. What’s really happening in that abbey? 

I didn’t expect to be expressing this, but Tomb of Ligeia is easily the equal of Masque of the Red Death. Whereas that film drew its production value from its elaborate sets and huge crowds of revellers, Corman knew what he had on his hands when he got the opportunity to film at Castle Acre Priory, some of the best preserved monastic ruins following the dissolution of most monasteries in the 1500s by Henry VIII. As a shooting location, this place lends Tomb of Ligeia an immediate sense of gravitas. There are no in-studio “moors” full of machined fog and spindly little trees here, but a real, tangible sense of something manmade being reclaimed by nature, something historical but decayed. Scenes take place at Ligeia’s graveside, dialogue scenes are shot dynamically as the camera follows participants walking the grounds with columns passing in the foreground, and one particularly lovely shot finds Christopher and Rowena dining outside, framed by one of the priory’s arches. It lends the whole proceeding a real air of class and distinction that is often lacking. The interior scenes are likewise a departure, as the main chamber of the rectory features a large stained glass window at the rear of the stage, which allows for several atmospheric shots that feature Rowena appearing behind a meditative Fell in the middle distance, the light from the window giving her the appearance of an otherworldly beauty. It’s top notch stuff. 

Screenwriter Robert Towne would go on to quite the career after this, winning an Oscar ten years later for Chinatown, being nominated again for Shampoo (with co-writer Warren Beatty), and co-writing both the John Grisham adaptation The Firm and the script for the first Mission: Impossible film. There’s a great economy of narrative in this one (which clocks in at a scant 81 minutes), and Towne, like other Poe adaptors under Corman’s direction before him, draws in elements from other short stories to give this one a little more punch. In the original story, titled simply “Ligeia,” we find ourselves receiving the story via narration from a typically unlikeable character. The unnamed man upon whom Fell was based was truly and deeply in love with his deceased wife and married his second wife, Rowena, apparently out of social obligation rather than any real interest. Our narrator is a self-confessed opium addict who barely tolerates his second wife, who herself is not terribly fond of him, and thinks her family foolish to have married her off to a kook who lives the way that he does. When she dies of some withering disease or other, he watches as she seems to struggle to revive herself. With each revival, she appears more and more to be Ligeia rather than Rowena, before his first wife appears to overtake his young bride entirely, with the last lines of the story being his horrified revelation of this change. Towne makes Fell much more likeable from the outset; he’s the platonic ideal of a Poe hero, longing for his lost love, but instead of having him resent or dislike Rowena, we get to see him change over time. When the two first meet, he’s cold and indifferent, clearly unpracticed in the maintenance of conversation, but as she refuses to leave him, there’s a kind of Beauty and the Beast story happening here wherein she gains his trust and ultimately wins his heart. 

Another major contributor to the success of this change is Shepherd, whose performance as Rowena is very strong. In most of these, the actresses who have appeared as the love interest (or leading lady) in these movies haven’t risen to the occasion. Myrna Fahey’s Madeline Usher in House of Usher had very little to do other than faint and try and act off of Mark Damon’s stiff and lifeless Philip and every single wife featured in Tales of Terror was completely forgettable, with only Hazel Court’s appearances as the treacherous duo of Emily in Premature Burial and Juliana in Masque of the Red Death being the strongest showings. Shepherd really demonstrates a lot of depth and subtlety here, which is not something that can be said about a lot of Corman productions. Notably, she plays Rowena as fully hot and heavy for this weird, gloomy neighbor from the moment that she meets him. It’s worth noting that Price’s Fell appears first in head-to-toe black, including top hat, coattails, and leather gloves, and wearing a pair of sunglasses that he attributes to a particular malady that renders sunlight unbearable; he’s a full on goth lord living in an abandoned church and Rowena is into it. I love that for her, and I appreciate her desire for this handsome, brooding widower as being something that makes him slowly defrost. If it weren’t for the machinations from beyond the grave, the two of them could really be happy together. 

That’s another point in Tomb’s favor; a lot of these end in death but don’t have a real sense of tragedy, while Tomb does. Of course, the film ends with the vicarage going down in flames (you didn’t think Corman would miss an opportunity to reuse that same burning house footage from Usher and which reappeared in Tales of Terror one last time, did you?), but it’s different. We’re not sad to see the titular House of Usher crumble to the ground, especially not when the last man standing is the aforementioned wooden Philip, and when Leonora rests at peace in her father’s arms in the “Morella” segment of Tales, we’re more relieved than anything else. In Tomb, Towne makes Fell so much more likeable and more pitiable that we’re actively rooting for him and Rowena to make it work, and that he ultimately dies as his house falls down around him, is a truly downbeat ending. Rowena’s survival is a nice change as well, but the film ends with her having been carried to safety and escaping in the carriage of Christopher, sending her off into a potential happy ending that makes the whole thing feel bleaker. 

Another Poe text from which Towne borrows is “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” which was previously adapted in Tales of Terror. Specifically, the dubious science of mesmerism plays a major role here as it did in that original text and its adaptation. In Tomb, we learn that Ligeia was a mesmerist and that, on her deathbed, she bewitched Fell into never having another wife, which has fractured him so completely that he’s essentially two different people depending upon whether it’s day or night. Mesmerism comes into play early on when the film is still playing coy with just how much supernatural business is happening around the place, as the cat is still behaving suspiciously and Rowena, in a hypnotic trance, is able to recall a song that her mother sang to her as a child despite having no distinct memories of the woman. Still entranced, she then begins to recite Ligeia’s dying words, which she has no reason to know. It’s a bit of a cheat to explain Fell’s apparent split mind, but it works well enough as a plot device that I won’t complain. How can I when the text is also giving us other surprisingly subtle little bits? When Rowena and Fell first meet, as mentioned above, he’s clad in all black, while Rowena wears a bright red dress that reflects the color of the fox from the hunt she’s peeled away from. At the end of that scene, the hunted fox is presented and then disappears, with Fell saying that the cat must have made off with it, just as Fell himself has already captured the fox-colored Rowena. It’s not Tolstoy, but you don’t normally get that much to really sink your teeth into in these Corman pictures, and I really appreciated the sweat that went into this one. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond