Watched: 10/04/2024
Format: DVD
Viewing: First!
Director: Roger Corman
This movie was SO GOOD.
I don't know what I was expecting, but I'd just never gotten around to Tales of Terror (1962) - an anthology of three Edgar Allen Poe short story adaptations - and I regret I'd never watched it until now. But when looking at Vincent Price movies, I often look to see who else is in them, because Price clearly loved goofing with specific pals, and this one has Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, and the dlightful Joyce Jameson, who I know from A Comedy of Terrors.
As an anthology, it lets Price play three different characters - showcasing the man's versatility (he could play it all!) while also letting him overplay a bit to suit the needs of each role. The first segment is "Morella" in which he plays a widower whose daughter returns to him - sent away as a baby after her mother died due to complications from child birth. In "The Black Cat", we get The Cask of Amontillado with Lorre walling up Price. In the third - a grisly tale of mesmerism with Basil Rathbone trying to manipulate the will of a dying man and use his horrible power to force Debra Paget into marriage.
Rather than get into three separate stories, what I'd say is - to me, this is when horror is at its best. The very ideas in the story are chilling. This is not a surprise as it's Poe, right? He's sort of the guy for this. But by keeping it brief, as Poe did, they can stay focused, not worry about filling a movie with movie things. Love interests, arcs for everyone, etc... So the actors can really lock in and push toward the themes and ideas, and we know this works - or did - from shows like The Twilight Zone.
So the ideas - the absolute horror of a mother who *is* furious her baby killed her, the terror of being walled up alive, of being trapped against your will between life and death... it's good stuff.
Look, you'll see me bitching about jump scares a lot. And... they're fine. They work. So does walking up behind an old lady at church and blowing an air horn (do not do this). Of course that stuff works, and sometimes it's fun and I enjoy it. But it's also not what sticks with me. Maybe the *vibe* of the movie sticks with me, but give me someone realizing they're all living in a horrendously fucked up situation already, and it's about to come to a head in a weird and horrible way, and I'm in! And if you can do that without, you know, also making something go "bang!" all of a sudden to I go "tee hee hee", all the better.
This movie, like some other stuff from Corman's AIP branch, looks pretty good! The sets are better than necessary, the costumes pretty slick, the color that weird "we won't pay for technicolor" garish, and we have Debra Paget (who is still with us!), so we know to put our money where it counts.
Anyway - people will think you need darkness and limbs twisting and wet hair on females to get terror, but to me - you just need the right concept and the right actors willing to go nuts on screen. And Corman got that. I literally applauded after each sequence. Just perfect chunks of horror to take you into the Halloween season.
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