the corman-poe cycle

Tres cines de la CDMX

/ swampflix / 2 Comments

I recently enjoyed a weeklong vacation in Mexico City with my family, my first time traveling abroad. It was an indulgent trip that mostly consisted of visiting art museums, shopping for vintage clothes, and eating piles of delicious food. Those may not sound like especially strenuous activities, but they did require long hours strolling in the sunshine, which meant a lot of afternoon downtime for my fellow travelers to recover with a traditional siesta. While everyone else smartly took the opportunity to nap between major-event excursions to the lucha libre show or to Diego Rivera’s studio, I instead ventured out of our apartment on solo adventures to survey the local cinema scene. In total, I visited three of CDMX’s local theaters that week for three unique moviegoing experiences. The films I saw were English-language productions subtitled in Spanish, so the only language barrier was figuring out how to order tickets without totally embarrassing myself; I like to think I failed admirably. Here’s a quick recap of the titles & venues I was able to squeeze into the trip.

Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus (2025) @ Cine Tonalá

The one hip English-language film that screened at every indie CDMX cinema the week I happened to visit was the portrait-of-an-artist documentary Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus. Like most audiences, I was previously only aware of its titular one-hit-wonder through her association with Jonathan Demme soundtracks. It turns out that was for a very obvious reason: racism. After running through about a dozen or so Q Lazzarus in the usual style of more famous artists’ docs, a title card in this new career recap reveals that she’s never had an official record release besides her contributions to movie soundtracks, because contemporary producers decided she was too “difficult to market.” It dropped my jaw. As a rise-to-near-fame story, Goodbye Horses gets intensely friendly & intimate with Q herself as she gets to know documentarian Eva Aridjis on a personal level. The most incredible part of her story, really, is the happenstance of meeting the two directors who’ve popularized her music through cinema—Aridjis & Demme—by picking them up as a cabbie working the streets of NYC, decades apart. For his part, Demme made an all-time classic out of “Goodbye Horses” by placing it in two separate films (Married to the Mob and, more infamously, Silence of the Lambs). Aridjis’s contribution is no less significant, though, since her new documentary includes a 21-track collection of Q Lazzarus songs that have been previously left unpublished.

Just as I knew little of Q Lazzarus’s personal or professional life before watching this new documentary, I also had no idea the documentary itself existed until I traveled to Mexico City, where it was playing relatively wide (partially because it’s director Eva Aridjis’s home town). That widespread distribution gave me plenty of options for cinemas to visit, and I settled on Cine Tonalá in the La Roma neighborhood. The single-screen theater is attached to a proudly laidback cocktail bar & performance venue, functioning as a multi-purpose arts space rather than a popcorn-shoveling corporate multiplex. Its closest local equivalent in New Orleans would be The Broad Theater, except with steeper incline seating and more lounging-around space in the lobby. It’s the kind of cozy spot with thoughtful programming that I would visit every week if I lived in the neighborhood (speaking from experience with The Broad).

The Haunted Palace (1963) @ Cineteca Nacional

The Cineteca Nacional museum in the Coyoacán neighborhood is anything but laidback. Built in the 1970s as a temple to celebrate & preserve the artform, it’s an impressively large & lively venue that was swarmed with visitors on the Saturday evening when I dropped by to see 1963’s The Haunted Palace. The 12-screen cinema was showing an eclectic mix of both repertory titles (including selections from Hayao Miyazaki & Agnieszka Holland) and new releases (including Goodbye Horses), but its public cinema is only one facet of the sprawling facility. The massive complex had a college campus feel, complete with museum exhibitions, appointment-only archives, multiple cafés & vendors, an outdoor market, and a quad area where young cineastes were chilling & chatting. I arrived at least a half-hour early, which allowed me enough time to go DVD shopping, picking up a copy of the Mexican horror staple El Vampiro. If I ever return, I’ll make sure to arrive a half-day early instead, since there was plenty more to explore elsewhere on-site.

Among the few repertory titles being offered that week, I of course went for the one directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price, since that’s squarely in my comfort zone. The Haunted Palace is an odd outlier in the Corman-Poe cycle that actor-director duo is best known for, since it only recites a few lines from an Edgar Allan Poe poem and mostly pulls its inspiration from Lovecraft instead. It’s also out of step with the typical payoffs of a classic Roger Corman creature feature, since its central monster doesn’t move an inch and Lon Chaney Jr. gets all of the best jump scares in a supporting role just by . . . hanging around. It’s only a pleasure for audiences who enjoy lounging in spooky castles and fog-machined graveyards while flipping through pages of the Necronomicon (or listening to its Vincent Price audiobook version), not in a rush to get anywhere. That is to say that I very much enjoyed seeing it screened big & loud with an enthusiastic crowd, even if there are far better titles in the Corman-Poe cycle that would’ve been a better use of the time & space (primarily, The Masque of the Red Death). In local terms, the experience was comparable to The Prytania’s recent afternoon screening of The Fall of the House of Usher, except the venue was a half-century newer and the audience was much fuller.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) @ Cinemex

If Cine Tonalá is the Mexico City equivalent of The Broad and Cineteca Nacional is the Mexico City equivalent of The Prytania, then Cinemex is the local equivalent of an AMC palace. I must’ve passed by a half-dozen locations of the corporate franchise while exploring different parts of the city, so it was hilarious that the one located closest to our apartment was called Casa de Arte, as if it were an independent arthouse. It’s the same way that AMC arbitrarily labels some of its offerings as “Artisan Films” even though they’re wide-release, major-studio productions with massive budgets (no offense meant to the artistry behind AMC Artisan titles like Sinners & The Phoenician Scheme). Cinemex does not offer a one-of-a-kind arthouse experience. It offers the same-as-it-is-everywhere multiplex experience, which is a different flavor that sometimes tastes just as good. It’s about as artisan as a cup of Coca-Cola.

It was in that downtown multiplex that I caught the latest (and possibly last) installment in the Misión: Imposible franchise, The Final Reckoning. Perhaps due to the lack of enthusiasm with the previous entry in that franchise, Dead Reckoning, the three-hour epic does a lot of sweaty scrambling to connect its story to the larger, decades-spanning Mission: Impossible narrative arc before then settling into the tension of two lengthy Tom Cruise stunts: one in which he raids a sinking submarine and one in which he pilots an upside-down airplane with his foot. The resulting picture is one hour of aggressively incomprehensible crosscutting & flashbacks followed by two hours of old-school movie magic. I would say that it’s the kind of classic movie magic that you can only find in Hollywood, except the movie was mostly shot in England and I personally watched in it Mexico. There really isn’t anything especially recommendable about it beyond the excuse it offers to escape the summer sun for a few hours with a lapful of overpriced junk food, which is the only reason anyone would visit an AMC or a Cinemex anyway.

-Brandon Ledet

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

In my review of The Spiral Staircase, I mentioned Douglas Brode’s Edge of Your Seat: The 100 Greatest Movie Thrillers, and that I expected I would soon be getting to #61 on that list, Roger Corman’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum.” It is the only film from Corman to make the list, and although I am reviewing it last in my Corman/Poe series of reviews, it’s notable that this was only the second of these adaptations, following House of Usher by about a year. It was itself followed by Premature Burial, and having viewed those out of order, I made a joke in my Usher review that it and Burial follow a fairly similar and specific sequence of events. I’m glad I didn’t watch them in release order, because I might have given up on Burial, given that Pendulum follows almost the exact same stations of the plot. 

As the film opens, a man approaches a seaside castle (different from Usher and Burial in that the character does not approach the lead’s home from across a foggy moor), knocks upon the door and demands to see the home’s owner, and is initially rebuffed by the servant who answers the door, but is then allowed in to the home by the sister of Vincent Price’s (and in the case of Burial, Ray Milland’s) character. It’s genuinely shocking that so little effort was made to differentiate this from its immediate predecessor, and that the film that immediately followed would adhere so closely to the same structure. Here, our hero is Francis Barnard (John Kerr), who has come to see the widower of his late sister Elizabeth (Barbara Steele). He is allowed entry by his sister-in-law, the Donna Catherine Medina (Luana Anders), who tells him that her brother Don Nicholas (Price) is resting, but allows him inside nonetheless. Barnard asks to see his sister’s grave, but Catherine tells him that she is not buried in some churchyard and is instead interred in the crypts beneath the castle; as she escorts him to Elizabeth’s resting place, the two pass another room in the catacombs from which a great racket emerges. Nicholas exits the door and tells Barnard that it conceals a contraption, the ceaseless operation of which he is responsible for. 

Although the Medinas are reticent to reveal every detail of Elizabeth’s death, the arrival of family friend Dr. Leon (Antony Carbone) leads him to drop some information that prompts Barnard to demand explanation. As it turns out, although theirs was a good and loving marriage, Nicholas’s beloved bride was ultimately affected by the evil that is present in the Medina estate, as Nicholas and Catherine’s father, Sebastian (also Price) was a member of the Spanish Inquisition. An untold number of people were tortured and killed in the castle’s catacombs, where Sebastian’s implements of torture remain. Apparently, the sleepwalking Elizabeth made her way to this chamber and somehow got herself stuck in an iron maiden, and when she awoke there, she died of heart failure from the fright of it all. Of course, Nicholas himself fears that Elizabeth was not truly dead when she was buried (again, just as in Usher and Burial), despite Dr. Leon’s willingness to stake his reputation on his confirmation of her death, and that her spirit haunts the castle as a result. There are spooky things about, after all. Elizabeth would play the harpsichord nightly for her husband, and when the instrument is heard late at night and one of her rings found atop it despite the apparent absence of any people or even a way in or out of the room, it raises questions. A kind of explanation is found when Barnard discovers a series of secret passageways that connect locked rooms to Nicholas’s own chambers, with Nicholas himself fearing that he may be losing his mind and performing as Elizabeth. 

This one is pretty fun, and it probably is the best thriller of Corman’s Poe cycle. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers as much as I can for these but I don’t seem to be able to find a way to talk “around” another of the recurring elements here, so I’ll just have to come right out with it: it’s very strange how often the resolution to the apparent mystery is that Vincent Price’s character’s wife isn’t as in love with him as he was with her, and also that reports of her death are greatly exaggerated. As in The Raven, we’re never given any reason to think that Elizabeth here, Lenore there, or Emily in Burial are anything other than the loving, adoring spouses that they appear to be, until the sudden revelation that all of the gaslighting being performed against the lead is being done by his wife. And it’s Hazel Court two of those times! (She also appeared in Masque of the Red Death, but her villainous nature is on display from her first moment on screen therein.) It stands to reason that making eight of these movies in four years would be bound to lead to some recycling of plots, especially given that the specific Poe works being “adapted” also have large Venn diagram overlaps in their narratives, but viewing this one as the finale in an attempt to save the best for last ends up doing it a disservice. It’s not a bad movie, but it feels repetitive, which isn’t fair to hold against Pendulum because it was only the second one of these that Corman made and is thus responsible for setting the standard which was copied, not vice versa. But hey, at least the Medina castle doesn’t get burned to the ground at the end.

One of the recurring elements present here that really works is the use of the oversaturated nightmare sequence, although here it’s more of an oversaturated flashback. As Nicholas reveals the details of the halcyon days that he and Elizabeth had together, everything is bathed in greens and blues, which turn to purple when Elizabeth “takes ill.” There’s also a fun iris-in transition to this flashback, which happens again when Catherine reveals to Barnard that Nicholas actually bore witness to the murder of his mother and uncle Bartolome at the hands of their father, who discovered his wife and brother were adulterers. In this sequence, the saturation color turns to a bloody, angry red, and it works remarkably well. (For those like me whom I would lovingly refer to as “Belle & Sebastian-pilled,” think of it as going from the cover of The Boy With the Arab Strap to Write About Love to If You’re Feeling Sinister.) Of course, this all comes back around when it’s revealed just who’s behind everything, only for Nicholas to fall backward down some stairs in fright at the sudden reappearance of Elizabeth and, concussed (or more), descends into the belief that he is Sebastian and that Elizabeth and her lover are the late Mrs. Medina and Bartolome and exacts his revenge accordingly, not entirely unlike Dexter Ward being overtaken by the spirit of his ancestor in The Haunted Palace. 

Another notable element of these, now having seen all of them, is how variably effective they work as mystery thrillers. Other than Masque with its large ensemble, the cast of all of these films has been relatively small, in line with Corman’s notoriously spendthrift nature. As a result, the extremely limited number of characters can curtail the film’s ability to provide sufficient red herrings or otherwise conceal the identity of the film’s villain or villains. Pendulum certainly does the best job of keeping one guessing as to what’s really happening in the stately mansion in which all the events occur, playing things close enough to the vest that the reveal of Elizabeth’s co-conspirator feels satisfying but not obvious. That’s probably why Brode selected this one for inclusion in Edge of Your Seat, even though I wouldn’t call this the best of the Corman-Poe cycle overall. In his “also recommended” section, however, I found that he agreed with me overall, writing “Among the other Poe adaptations, by far the best two are The Masque of the Red Death […] and Tomb of Ligeia,” the latter of which he calls “an intelligent, restrained suspense tale.” 

You may be asking yourself where the pendulum is in all of this, or the pit, for that matter. For that, my friend, you will have to watch for yourself.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Raven (1963)

/ swampflix / 3 Comments

Fair warning: The friend with whom I have been watching these Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s work hated this one. I pointed out that the presence of Peter Lorre here should have been an early indication that this was going to be a more comedic outing, like Tales of Terror, but this was still a disappointment to him even with that qualification. During the viewing this was referred to as a “Scooby Doo ass movie” and the final verdict from my friend was “I like Looney Tunes; I don’t like Scooby-Doo.” Take from that what you will, and keep it in mind for your viewing decision. 

This movie is so much fun. From the film’s opening moments, in which Vincent Price’s dulcet tones recite Poe’s “The Raven” while we see him fiddling his fingers around in the air and drawing a neon bird in the room with magic, I was enraptured. Within moments, a raven appears at his window and taps at it; upon being let in, said bird begins talking with Peter Lorre’s voice, identifying himself as a fellow sorcerer and demanding assistance with being returned to human form. Once he’s back in his true body (after an interlude in which insufficient potion ingredients rendered him back into Lorre-form, but with bird wings), he introduces himself as Dr. Adolphus Bedlo, while Price’s character is revealed to be called Dr. Erasmus Craven. Bedlo recognizes the name and identifies Craven as the son of the late leader of the wizard order and asks him why he has never sought to take his father’s place, instead allowing the organization to be controlled by the late elder Craven’s lifelong enemy Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff). Craven demurs, saying that since he lost his wife, he’d really rather stay home near her body and do little magic tricks rather than any powerful sorcery. Upon viewing her portrait, Bedlo swears he has seen the late Lenore that very night at Scarabus’s castle. Craven’s daughter Estelle (Olive Sturgess)—who is notably stated to have been the daughter of Craven’s unnamed first wife, not Lenore—demands that she be allowed to accompany them, although Craven only relents when his coachman becomes enchanted and must remain behind. This lack of someone to drive the coach is resolved by the sudden appearance of Bedlo’s son Rexford (Jack Nicholson!), who takes the quartet to Scarabus’s castle. What secrets lie there in wait? 

This is another Corman-Poe feature penned by Richard Matheson, and was apparently based on his desire to do a full comedy feature following how much fun it was to put Lorre and Price together in the “Black Cat” section of Tales of Terror. As you can tell from the preface above, my friend and viewing companion did not find this to be a successful endeavor, while I can say that it totally worked for me. Price and Lorre are once again a terrific double act, and they ham it up here for much of the first half. The audience that will enjoy watching Craven attempt to dress Bedlo in some of his clothes so that they can go and face off against Scarabus may be small, but I’m in it; Lorre’s clear smaller stature trying to pull up the sleeves and hem of clothes designed to fit Price (or even exaggerated from there) is very funny, and it doesn’t hurt that the two of them end the scene wearing the most ridiculous hats one could imagine. In fact, by the time that the quartet of Craven and daughter, Bedlo, and Rexford arrive at Scarabus’s castle, all four of them are wearing extremely stupid headgear, and I got a real kick out of that. 

Where most Poe heads may find greatest displeasure in this one is in just how far it strays from the source material. All of these do, really, but most of them at least maintain some kind of atmosphere and are relatively respectful to the intent of the stories from which they draw their origins; Raven is arguably disrespectful in how it treats Lenore. In a plot that recurs from Pit and the Pendulum, it turns out that Lenore isn’t dead; she simply faked her death in order to move in with Scarabus and learn “greater magic” from him. One can only assume that Lenore initially got together with Craven expecting that he would assume his place at the head of the wizard guild, and when he didn’t, she glommed onto his father’s successor instead, making her a philosopher’s stone-digger from the outset. This becomes more clear at the end when Scarabus’s apparent death leads her to immediately claim that she was with him because she was bewitched and that his death has released her from his thrall, but luckily no one buys it. “The Raven” is a poem that is so deeply about anguish, longing, and grief, one can’t help but find that this subversion of the lost Lenore, whose representation of this feeling is so foundational to western literature that there’s a whole TV Trope about it, to be moderately controversial. 

The nature of this film makes it one that provides little opportunity for criticism. We’ve said it before here, in both reviews and on the podcast, that sometimes a comedy film can be the hardest to review because one simply finds themself recapitulating and restating the jokes within the film that one found funny. With Tales of Terror, that comedy was in the prolonged middle segment and bracketed by more self-serious fare, so there was still much to discuss. Here, this one is a straight comedy all the way through. Where it fails is in its insistence on the insertion of the magician’s offspring. Estelle has little to do here, and although it makes sense that it would be established that Lenore was merely her stepmother so that she’s not as heartbroken as her father is, one could argue that making Lenore her mother might have given the film something more in the way of emotional stakes. Her presence is really only justified in the end so that a threat against her safety is used to attempt to extort Craven into giving up his magical secrets. In turn, Rexford is really only an appendage to her story, padding out the runtime with a sequence in which he’s driving the coach from Craven’s to Scarabus’s and becomes apparently possessed by some wild force before he regains his composure. 

I’d also say that Karloff is underused here. He doesn’t appear until halfway through the film, but when he does, he’s great. His feigned friendliness in his greeting of Craven and his waving away of Bedlo’s charges as being the result of a social visit that turned sour because of the latter’s excessive drinking are fun, but one wishes that he might have been present a bit earlier in the runtime. He is used to great comedic effect in the film’s finale, however, as Craven and Scarabus get into a wizard’s duel that presages wuxia wizard battles in the vein of Buddha’s Palm (in fact, there are some special effects that appear to have been used part and parcel in Buddha’s Palm). It’s magnificent, and even my friend who hated the movie couldn’t help but enjoy himself as Price and Karloff flit around on hovering chairs and turn magic missiles into harmless plastic bats, etc. If that’s all that you’re interested in, you can find that in isolation on YouTube, but I would recommend giving this one a full watch.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)

/ swampflix / 4 Comments

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

Tales of Terror (1962)

/ swampflix / 4 Comments

As I now find myself approaching the tipping point of having seen more than half of Roger Corman’s adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe, at which point it only makes sense to see them all, right? And since I’m already watching them completely out of order (having watched the third, the seventh, the first, and now the fourth), why not just hack away at them in whatever order I happen to be able to get my hands on them? The next logical step after House of Usher would be to move on to The Pit and the Pendulum, but the video store didn’t have that one in stock when I swung by, so instead I picked up Tales of Terror, which is at some points quite good and at others fairly mediocre, averaging out fairly positively. The film comprises three segments that adapt four Poe short stories, opening with an adaptation of “Morella” and ending with an adaptation of “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” with a mash-up of “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado” in the middle. 

Tales of Terror opens on a beating heart, the camera’s eye approaching it as Vincent Price intones an introduction. A pastel image of a seaside manse fades into a matte painting of the same, with waves crashing upon the shore. It is to this place that the heroine of the piece arrives. Her name is Leonora (Maggie Field), and she has come to the home of her estranged father (Price) after spending her whole life, virtually since birth, not knowing him. At first her expressed desire to visit him once before she’s “out of [his] life forever” seems to mean that she’s tying up loose ends before marrying, but it eventually comes to light that she’s dying. Her father, who had sent his daughter away because of the dying wish of his wife Morella (Leona Gage), who died in the middle of a party that she attended by her own demand despite being too weak following a difficult childbirth. Leonora and her father bond over the fact that they are both fading away, and when she is murdered by her mother’s spectral spirit, Morella takes over her bodily, while Lenora appears in place of her mother’s corpse. Morella then strangles her terrified husband as the mansion catches fire (reusing footage from the destruction of the house in Usher) and the body swap reverses, with Leonora smiling peacefully in death knowing that her mother has been vanquished. 

Skipping ahead to the final segment, the adaptation of “Valdemar,” Price appears as the title character, who has invited family friend Dr. James (David Frankham) to visit the Valdemar home. Valdemar has a strong relationship with his wife Helene (Debra Paget), but his recent interest in the growing “science” of mesmerism has led him to invite a hypnotist named Carmichael (Basil Rathbone) as well. Valdemar expresses his wish to be placed under hypnosis at the moment of his death, so that some manner of “scientific” inquiry can be made about the potential of life within a lifeless man. His wish is fulfilled, and some months later, he’s now begging for Carmichael to release him from his undeath by ending the trance, but Carmichael’s designs on Helene mean that he refuses to do so unless she marries him. Dr. James attempts to force Carmichael to free Valdemar and Helene enters the fracas. When Carmichael attacks her as well, Valdemar’s corpse rises from his deathbed and kills the villain. Upon the moment of doing so, the hypnosis is released, and Valdemar instantly putrefies upon Carmichael’s prone body.

Both of these segments are fine. As noted in past reviews of other Corman/Poe ventures, Corman’s modus operandi was to pick a Poe story and then treat that as the third act of a screenplay, then craft the first two acts to lead into the adaptation of the original text. There’s a lot less room for that when you’re making an anthology of three short films with a total runtime of roughly ninety minutes. As such, there’s much less room for deviation here. Of the shorts, the adaptation of “Morella” strays the furthest from the original text; there, the primary focus of the story is on the unnamed narrator’s relationship with his wife, an infirm woman who teaches her husband all about her study of the philosophy of the mind, and that her hyperfixation on this was unsettling. She dies in childbirth and bears a daughter that the narrator never names, and whom he raises with a loving affection that he never had for his wife. She’s a strange child, however, preternaturally gifted and wise beyond her years in a way that discomfits the narrator. He never gives her a name, but upon the day of her christening, some compulsion drives him to speak the name “Morella” to the priest, causing the daughter to cry out “I am here” and then die in his arms. It’s not a story that readily lends itself to adaptation, and screenwriter Richard Matheson took the bare bones of it—mother died in childbirth, may possess said child in the moment of their death—and make it something that works better on the screen. That Price’s character has kept his dead wife’s corpse in a bedroom in the manor gives it a touch of the macabre, and having Leonora raised away from her father creates an opportunity for some character exploration between the two, and it works, even if it feels so “of a piece” with both Usher and Premature Burial as to feel derivative. It’s also helped by its brevity. 

The segment based upon “Valdemar” hews fairly closely to the source material, adding only a couple of characters to give the piece some breathing room. The original short story was narrated in the first person by the mesmerist, who is Valdemar’s friend, rather than the villainous Carmichael. In fact, the very format of the title “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” and the way that names are redacted within it have led most critics to believe the piece to be a bit of a hoax on Poe’s part mocking the gullibility of the public. Matheson adds a wife and the family friend who is to be her suitor in her incoming widowhood (at Valdemar’s direction before he dies, mind you) so that there is some manner of conflict that the story’s epistolary “dispatch from the frontiers of science” form lacked. The make-up work done on Price to turn him into a corpse that’s failing to rot properly is very good, and it’s a moment of genuine shock when he rises and attacks the man who is forcing him to remain in an unpleasant state of undeath. The instant deterioration of the corpse as seven months of decomposition catch up to it is also a gruesomely fun image, as it appears that Rathbone has been covered in skeletal bones and peanut butter slime. 

Where this one really shines is in its “Black Cat” segment. A drunken character played by Peter Lorre comes home and harasses his wife, Annabel (Joyce Jameson), for some money that he can drink away at the tavern, in between berating her, calling her a liar, and complaining about her beloved cat. She claims there is no more and calls her husband Montresor, which will automatically sound familiar to anyone who has read “The Cask of Amontillado,” but which might be chalked up to being one of those Poe adaptation easter eggs. After all, the narrator of “The Black Cat” and his wife are both unnamed, yet here she is called Annabel, and when Dario Argento had to give the narrator a name in his adaptation, he came up with “Rod Usher.” (Perhaps in reference to Tales of Terror, the wife in Argento’s “Black Cat” adaptation was likewise given the name Annabel.) Unable to come up with a penny to get back to drinking, Montresor takes to the streets and begs for change, until he comes upon a meeting of wine retailers and sneaks in. The guest of honor at the little convention is Fortunato (Price), sealing that this will be a combination of the explicitly named source material and “Amontillado.” Fortunato’s claim to fame is that he is a perfect palate and can name any vintage, which Montresor mocks as he claims to be able to do the same, without any airs. This leads to a drinking contest in which Montresor, surprisingly, is able to go toe to toe with Fortunato when identifying estates, vineyards, and vintages (he can even tell when one bottle came from “the better slope”). 

Of course, as his ultimate goal is to get sloshed rather than prove himself, he succeeds, and Fortunato reluctantly escorts/supports him home. Annabel and Fortunato immediately hit it off, and he begins to see her while Montresor is out drinking, with him little realizing that the reason his wife suddenly has money to give him to go out drinking is because Fortunato is paying to get him out of the house. When this is made clear to him, he returns home and sees Fortunato departing, then he enters the house, where he confronts and kills his wife, then chains her body in an alcove in the crypts below the house. Later, he lures Fortunato there and likewise chains him up, then bricks up a wall to conceal their bodies (in “Cat,” the narrator cites as inspiration “the monks of the middle ages [who] are recorded to have walled up their victims,” while the narrator of “Amontillado” just gets to work). From there, the story plays out just as in “The Black Cat,” with Montresor content that no one will ever find his wife or Fortunato, whom he claims ran off together, until, while allowing the police to inspect the place, he arrogantly slaps the wall that he built and is greeted by the growl of the cat he errantly bricked up inside, causing the police to discover the makeshift tomb. 

This one is a pure delight from beginning to end. Price is playing stoic men in both of the other segments, but here he gets to fop it up real good, and it’s pure magic. The scene in which he dandily polishes a small silver cup that he wears around a chain on his neck and makes a great show of tasting the wines, complete with swishing and hammy fish faces, is priceless. Lorre is no slouch, either, as he plays Montresor with a hapless impotence that makes him pitiable despite his role as the villain of the piece. The two on screen together make for an immediately comedic pairing, as the short and stout Lorre next to the tall and lean Price (Lorre was 5’3” and Price 6’4”) look like they’re two cartoon characters drawn in distinctively different styles. The film does still manage to include the spooky dream sequence that appears to have been all but contractually obligated to be in these films, and instead of using a distinctive color saturation, the film’s image is just “squashed” from the top and the bottom, such that the already vaguely turtle-walking-upright stature and body language of Montresor becomes even more pronounced and humorous. Although it’s bracketed by two other stories that I would label as decent but forgettable, this one makes the price of the whole worthwhile. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

Movie of the Month: The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

/ swampflix / 32 Comments

masque
Every month one of us makes the other two watch a movie they’ve never seen before & we discuss it afterwards. This month Brandon made James & Britnee watch The Masque of the Red Death (1964).

Brandon:
The Masque of The Red Death is one of eight films in the Corman-Poe cycle: a series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations directed by B-movie legend Roger Corman for American International Pictures. The Masque is widely considered the best of the Poe cycle as well as one of Corman’s best films overall, a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with. There’s so much about The Masque that’s firmly in my wheelhouse: over-the-top set design, an early glimpse of 60’s era Satanic psychedelia, Vincent Price taking effete delight in his own cruelty, a fatalistic ending that doesn’t stray from the pessimism of Poe’s story, Corman pushing the limits of what he can get away with visually on a shoestring budget. I love it all.

What struck me most on this recent viewing of The Masque is how well it’s suited for the Carnival season. With Fat Tuesday looming around the corner, it was impossible not to see aspects of Carnival in the masquerade ball hosted by Prince Prospero (Vincent Price). The cheap costumes & mockery of opulence is very much reminiscent of Mardi Gras parades. There’s even a scene where Prospero literally throws beads from a balcony shouting “Gifts! Gifts!” and scoffs at the greed of the people below. As the threat of The Red Death plague becomes increasingly severe, the masquerade takes on a “party while the ship is sinking” vibe New Orleans knows all too well. Horror films are usually tied to Halloween, but The Masque of the Red Death is distinctly akin to Mardi Gras in my mind.

James, do you also see Carnival in The Masque’s decadence, or does the Satan worship overpower that influence?

James:
Man, The Masque of the Red Death was awesome. The bold stylistic choices that Corman made on a limited budget and limited time (the final masquerade scene was filmed in a day) are astonishing. Some of the images in the film (The Red Death himself being the starkest) are mesmerizing. I think the film should also be noted for its pitch-perfect tone. Despite its macabre images, philosophical discussions of Satanism, and Prince Prospero’s nastiness, what could have been a dreary chore is instead a blast throughout.

In regards to the presence of Carnival in the film, I do think the masquerade ball scenes in particular have a very Mardi Gras feel to them. Masks with feathered beaks, gorilla suits, and a child masquerading as a little person don’t feel too far removed from the typical Carnival season debauchery. The Carnival feel also deepened a central theme of the film: lost souls celebrating a kind of momentary victory over Death. Ultimately, the film seems to have a nihilistic attitude towards Death, implying that the celebration is indeed a momentary victory and whether Christian, Satanist, or Atheist, we will all have to eventually confront an indifferent Death. But it also seems to find solace in our ability to shape our own existence while we are alive. This is echoed The Red Death’s climactic statement “Each man creates his own God for himself – his own Heaven, his own Hell.”

Britnee, what was your interpretation of the film’s philosophy on Death? Is it wholly negative?

Britnee:
This was my first time viewing The Masque of Red Death, and I have to say that I was blown away. Vincent Price as Prince Prospero was dynamite. I was so close to hiding under the covers during the close-ups of his signature evil stare, but seconds later, I was imagining what it would be like to have a conversation & afternoon tea with him in one of those seven colored rooms. Also, one of my favorite things about the film was the set and costumes. I know the look was supposed to have a Medieval vibe, but I really felt that I was at a Satanic drug dealer’s mansion party in the early 60s. All that was missing was the orange shag carpet.

As for my interpretation of the film’s philosophy on Death, I’m honestly not 100% sure. Death has always terrified/interested me, and I caught myself really falling into some deep thoughts about it while watching this film. The Christians and Satanists in Masque both experienced violent deaths, and neither of their higher powers swooped in to save them or give them a miraculous second chance. I guess the film is trying to show that Death cannot be avoided, regardless of power or faith. In the end when The Red Death states “Sic transit gloria mundi,” which literally means “Thus passes the glory of this world,” everything sort of hit me. Life can be very short & leave without warning, whether you’re a Christian villager living in poverty or a wealthy Satanic prince; it’s coming for us all!

Something else that stuck out was the interesting relationship between Prospero and Francesca. After sparing Francesca’s life, Prospero brings her to his castle to make her his consort and gives her a taste of his world. He becomes very intrigued with Francesca’s innocence and faith. As for Francesca, there are times where it seems as though she is giving in to temptation, but simultaneously she is in constant focus on her escape.

Brandon, what themes do the relationship between Prospero and Francesca bring to the film?

Brandon:
It’s reasonable to assume that Prospero wasn’t always the cruel tyrant we meet in the picture. He didn’t emerge from the womb executing peasants and cursing God. Prospero’s poisonous personality was likely the result of a gradual corruption of his soul, an evil born of his prosperous upbringing. Raised with untold wealth & influence, he came to rule over his fellow human beings like an unforgiving deity. Unsatisfied with the power his privilege as Earthly nobility affords him, he reaches even further beyond this realm and makes a deal with Satan in an attempt to overcome Death. Yet, there’s a little speck of good left in Prospero’s heart, which I think is what we see in his treatment of Francesca. At times he tries to prove that even her innocence can be corrupted because he wants to be assured that his own wickedness can be found in every person’s heart. He even asks her to join him in mocking the greed & decay in the guests at the masque, because he believes all people to be as amoral as he is. At other times, he goes out of his way to protect her and spare her life, an instinct that surprises even The Red Death. The only other glimpse of good we see in Prospero is when he asks his guards to spare a baby’s life at the gates. Although he is beyond redemption, (not that redemption matters in the eyes of Death,) Francesca affords Prospero his last chance to act like a true human being.

Then there’s the fact that the actress who plays Francesca, Jane Asher, was just achingly beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, that she was in a relationship with & at one time engaged to Sir Paul McCartney in the 60s. She was attractive enough to snare a Beatle during the fever pitch of Beatlemania, so surely a demented prince who can’t even cheat Death wouldn’t stand a chance against her charms. Perhaps simple lust spares her life. I think Francesca stands out here as a hip youngster (maybe it’s all in those bangs?) and helps add to that 60s drug dealer mansion party vibe mentioned above. So much of the film feels rebellious in an anachronistic way. Prospero’s philandering is out of control. Lines like “Satan rules the universe!” and “Each man creates his own god for himself” are pretty edgy for 1964, even coming from the villains. Keep in mind this is still years before the New Hollywood, a movement Roger Corman cannot be praised enough for influencing.

James, how do you see the balance between the movie’s setting and the era in which it was filmed?

James:
The movie definitely has an edge that makes it still creepy and blasphemous over 40 years later. I wonder how much Corman was in tune with the counterculture of the time because, despite it being a British production, the film feels more like a deranged product of the 60’s San Fransisco hippie movement, like a horror version of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; its macabre decadence fueled by lust and greed. It’s also most likely no coincidence that the epicenter of the hippie movement was the same place that the Anton Lavey established the Church of Satan in 1966. Themes like the destruction of social norms and an openness to sexual and spiritual experiences seem to be shared by The Masque of the Red Death, Satanists, and the hippies; “Each man creates his own god for himself” is THE basic philosophical statement of Satanism. I also think this is reflected in the dark, psychedelic imagery that The Masque of the Red Death and Satanist rituals share. (Photo for example)

satanist

Britnee, How strongly do you think the psychedelic aesthetic of the 60’s influenced The Masque of the Red Death? Any specific examples that stick out to you?

Britnee:
I think that The Masque of the Red Death was as psychedelic as it gets, at least for a horror film based in Medieval times. An example that really sticks out to me is the colors used throughout the film, most importantly, the use of red. Red usually represents blood, gore, and all the good stuff horror movies are made of, but when I also think of the term “psychedelic,” red is usually the color that comes to mind. After doing a little research, I found that the color red has a pretty long wavelength and very low vibration; this pretty much explains how the red tint that is present in multiple scenes really gives off this warm, draining feeling. Sounds a bit like the feeling you get after taking a hallucinogen or two, right? Also, all of those gaudy colors in the castle & clothing of Prospero and his pals can’t go without mention. While I’m not a Middle Ages expert or enthusiast, I’m almost positive that the colors of clothing and décor weren’t as bright and vibrant during that era as they are in the film. It’s obvious that the 60’s psychedelic aesthetic heavily influenced those hues.

Lagniappe

Brandon:
I’d just like to point out one last time just how early this film was released. A lot of what we think of as the hippie-dippie 60s came very late in the decade. The era-defining Summer of Love was in 1967, the same year Roger Corman dropped acid for the first time and fictionalized his experience in the film The Trip. The Masque‘s 1964 release positions the film as years ahead of its time. Corman was pulling off the Satanic psychedelia vibe the same year that Mary Poppins & My Fair Lady were huge cultural hits. I’m not saying Masque was particularly a major influence on the countercultural swell that was to come, but it at least was somewhat visually intuitive. And Corman himself did have direct influence on the later films that typified that counterculture, films like Easy Rider and Bonnie & Clyde. Even back then, when “don’t trust anyone over 30” was a motto to live by, he was the hippest geezer in the room and a filmmaking rebel.

Britnee:
After the discussion with The Swampflix Crew, so many ideas and thoughts about The Masque of the Red Death were brought to the surface. It gave me an excuse to watch the film a couple more times, and I fell in love with it more each viewing. The movie also got me hooked on the Corman-Poe films, so I’m currently trying to get my hands on all of them. The Masque of the Red Death was just a great balance of horror, suspense, and drama that gave me some really unsettling thoughts & a case of the willies. Great job, Corman!

James:
Really enjoyed the discussion of The Masque of the Red Death. Watching the film a second time and taking into account all the points you guys made deepened my appreciation and understanding of the film. Definitely want to see more Corman, especially the Poe films. As Brandon pointed out, Corman seemed to have his hand on the pulse of the counterculture and was always one step ahead of mainstream Hollywood. Truly a filmmaker ahead of his time.

-The Swampflix Crew

Upcoming Movie of the Months
March: James presents The Seventh Seal (1957)
April: Britnee presents Blood & Black Lace (1964)