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Tales of Terror (1962)
As part of the recent Vincent Price Collection Fox Home Entertainment has re-released director Roger Corman's Poe anthology "Tales of Terror" to DVD. Corman is well known for his "Poe" films from "The Pit and the Pendulum", "House of Usher", and "The Tomb of Ligeia". So it was only fitting that "Tales of Terror" which is an excellent vehicle of Vincent Price's to be included in the set.
All three of the stories are adapted from works of writer Edgar Allen Poe. All of them featuring Vincent Price as well as actors like Basil Rathbone, and Peter Lorre. The stories that are adapted are "Morella", "The Black Cat", and "The (Facts in the) Case of M. Valdemar" which happen to be loose representations of the actual Poe stories.
The first story is called "Morella" and is about a women who travels to see her father, who hasn't been apart of her life for twenty six years. When she visits him she finds out about her mother who died just months after giving birth to her. This one is more ghost story than anything else and although a bit flat still shows Vincent Price as a great character in Locke. It's a tragic story at it's base although it's not really given the appropriate time to get where it needs to go. The story was adapted to screenplay by the great Richard Matheson so I was expecting a bit more from that alone. The set design on this one is excellent and shows just how well Corman was with working in a limited budget situation. Although it's not bad, it's easily the worst out of the three stories in the film.
Second up we have my personal favorite entry into "Tales of Terror" which is the Corman/Matheson adaptation of Poe's "The Black Cat". It stars Peter Lorre who puts on a very memorable performance as Montresor Herringbone, a local drunk who cares more about his booze than he does his own wife. But the real reason to watch this one is for Vincent Price playing Fortunato the wine taster. He's extremely funny in the role as it's written more comedic for him and he is hamming it up big time. It's like Price knew that Lorre was going to put out a great performance, so it had to turn it up a notch. Not only that but this is one of the most unique adaptations of "The Black Cat" as it's easily the most comedic one I've seen. Apparently there were quite a large amount of restrictions that Hollywood studios were imposing at the time, so they went away from the originally more dark story of Poe's. Either way, it works out wonderfully and might have been my favorite adaptation of the famous story that I've seen.
Finally we have The Case of M. Valdemar starring Price as Mr. Valdemar himself and Basil Rathbone here as the scumbag Carmichael character. It's a creepy little story with a nice Zombie twist to it that is the closest to the source than any of the other versions here in the film. Valdemar was interested in using hypnosis as a way to counter the effects of death only to have an evil, power hungry Carmichael take his power and run with it to get what he wants out of life, which happens to be Valdemar's wife.
Personally I thought that this was a rather enjoyable anthology of Poe stories that really mesh well together. It was also great to see Vincent Price step it up and play three different characters in all three stories. Also with Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone added in there was some pretty good acting throughout the movie. All of that mixed in with Corman's low budget charm and the fact that all of the stories were pretty solid I would say that this has to be a welcome addition to the Vincent Price Collection. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Rating - ***
-Ed Demko
