Tales of Terror

I'm going to review another great DVD Matt sent me. It's called Tales of Terror and it's from 1962. Tales of Terror is a set of what I'd call three mini movies. Each mini movie is based off of a story by Edgar Allan Poe. The stories featured are "Morella", "The Black Cat", and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar".

This collection of mini movies was directed by Roger Corman and each one stars Vincent Price.

This DVD is a fun watch, especially if you're a fan of Poe's stories. Here's what I thought about each one:

Morella

This one was my least favorite. I'm not saying you shouldn't watch it, but don't go into this expecting anything remotely lighthearted. Not that any of this is lighthearted, it's just that this one is a real downer! Vincent Price shows a lot of expression in his role as Locke, the widower who lives in a rundown, spiderweb infested house. His eyebrows get a real workout. Probably the most interesting part of this story is his house. I have never seen so many thickly layered cobwebs. A Tarantula eventually appears. Do Tarantulas even spin webs?

See the cobwebs? The rest of the house is like that too.

There's not too much more to say without giving the whole story away. Basically, Locke's daughter comes home to visit him after a long separation and things do not go well. There is also a mean-spirited ghost involved.

The Black Cat

This story was the one I was most familiar with. From what I've read, this version was a combination of "The Black Cat" and "The Cask of Amontillado". Peter Lorre plays Montresor Herringbone in this and he does a great job of being the bossy, repulsive, drunken husband of Annabelle (played by Joyce Jameson).

Joyce Jameson as Annabelle

It's hard to imagine why Annabelle married Montresor. He stumbles around yelling at her, while taking all the money she makes and spending it at the pub. (Plus she's a million times better looking than he is.) Montresor also has an annoying way of yelling at the black cat Annabelle owns. He even throws the cat when it gets near him, in a way that I doubt we'd see in a modern movie.

On one particularly bad night, Montresor takes the small amount of money his wife has made from sewing and heads out to the pub. He gets extremely drunk and stumbles down the road to a wine tasting. Here, among more proper gentlemen, he drunkenly declares that he is the best wine tester around. Luchresi, played by Vincent Price, is known to the best.

I love the expression on the guy's face behind Peter Lorre.

So the two of them have a competition to see who can identify wines the best. It's worth watching this just for Vincent Price's facial expressions! It's so funny seeing him act like the haughty wine taster. We're nearly in cheeseball, Egghead territory with him at that point.

Peter Lorre just gulps down the wine, but he is great at identifying it after all his drinking experience.

Luchresi helps a stumbling Montresor home. There Luchresi meets Montresor's wife. You can guess where that leads. Some twists and turns happen after that, involving Montresor's revenge and the irony of that black cat.

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

I really enjoyed watching "The Black Cat" but this one was my favorite. Vincent Price is back again, this time as a dying man named M. Valdemar. He has a lovely wife named Helene (played by Debra Paget). Valdemar loves his wife so much that he only thinks of her happiness. He tells her that once he is gone, he wishes her to marry again so she won't be alone. He feels she should marry his doctor since they already have such a connection. This isn't too creepy since the doctor is a nice man, and you get the feeling he and Helene already have feelings they don't act on because of their respect for Valdemar.

Add to that mix Mr. Carmichael, Valdemar's personal hypnotist, (played by an outstanding Basil Rathbone.) I kept trying to place who I was watching, and it's bizarre that I didn't figure it out sooner. I've been watching Basil Rathbone play Sherlock lately, so he should have been more recognizable. It's just that he was about 20 years older by this point and acting like a completely different character. He was convincingly evil.

Mr. Carmichael has convinced Valdemar to be part of an experiment. The deal is that as Valdemar dies, Carmichael will put him in a trance, thus making his spirit stick around as his body loses life. Valdemar's wife and doctor try to talk him out of this experiment, but he insists that he owes Carmichael for years of hypnotising his pain away. I won't say much more except, the experiment works, Carmichael has the hots for Valdemar's wife, and I loved the ending. It was a total surprise!

 

Matt just told me today that the other side of this disk contains Twice-Told Tales - some versions of Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories, so those should also be a fun watch!

By the way, don't watch the trailer for Tales of Terror before watching the full movies. The trailer strangely gives away the endings to all three stories! Luckily, I watched the trailer on the DVD extras after watching everything else.

P.S. ~ If you follow me on twitter you might have seen an Edgar Allan Poe pin board I shared recently. There are a lot of cool old illustrations on that page:

Edgar Allan Poe pin board