I made the stupid mistake before this film of actually reading the Poe stories on which it is based, thereby making it seem even sillier and shallower by comparison than it probably already was. Corman was never really interested in the real Poe, jettisoning his very difficult (both intellectually and ethically) ideas, cool stylistic method of relating the most appalling incidents and the tension between his narrative verbosity and tautly compact plots, declamatic precision and immense suggestiveness; retaining only the very superficial cod-Gothic trappings and the reputation for mental disease and horror the name Edgar Allen Poe conjures up.
So, in TALES OF TERROR, the adaptations of Poe are a nonsense. Rigorous tales written to dramatise philosophical tenets are turned into daft melodramas. Ciphers are turned into caricatures. The most intricately constructed allegories are literalised and made to seem childishly crass. Giving characters motivations and histories make a mockery of Poe's fictional chessmanship.
But if it's bad Poe, it's terrific Corman, and sometimes his additions bring interesting variations of their own. The first and third tales are the weakest. 'Morella' ignores most of the plot of the very short tale, and deals with the events after its climax. A young woman, Lenora Locke, arrives at a derelict castle, having been sent away by her father 26 years previously after the death of her mother, for which she was somehow blamed. Her father is initially hostile, clearly insane with the grief; the house, Miss Havisham-like, is exactly as it was on the day Morella died, a banquet table wreathed in cobwebs and tarantulas, the dead woman's skeleton, unburied in her chamber. Gradually, though Locke's sanity returns through the love of his daughter, dying herself after a lifetime of bad marriages and ill-treatment by men. But Morella still demands revenge.
Corman counters Poe's misogyny by shifting the viewpoint away from the male narrator to a fermale heroine who barely exists in the tale. It is she who enters the house, experiences its horrors, restores its doomed inmate. The revenge of Morella also moves away from the narrator to this daughter, only its instrument in the story. Poe's necro-aesthetics and musing on the fragmented mind and the Ideal Soul are ignored, but there is nothing put in their place - consequently, the film doesn't make much sense. We don't understand why Morella should want to wreak revenge on someone who might have killed her as a baby.
The plot becomes dominated by the women - the heroine is killed, Morella takes her place - masculinity is impotent and goes irretrievably insane; the house of the mind goes up in flames. The film's tortuous melodramatics are uninteresting, and Vincent Price's heart doesn't seem in it, but there is remarkable narrative commentary from the wonderful music, and a brisk fluidity to Corman's filming that demands admiration.
The third film, 'The Facts Of The Case Of M. Valdemar', is perhaps closest in story to its plot, but furthest from its spirit. Poe's story about a hypnotist who managed, through mesmerism, to keep a man alive after death was written with such detachment that it was printed in a prestigious scientific journal as a true case study. That sense of experiment and report is crucial to the story's success as it reveals the paganistic powers of science, the unfathomable capabilities of the mind, and the terror of a dead man who cannot die. The mesmerist-narrator is always a detached scientist, and while his very detachment in such a case might betoken insanity, it is a far cry from the eye-rolling villainy of Basil Rathbone here, who simply wants to marry the dead man's wife.
Poe wants to show how mad calm, rational science is. Rathbone is simply demonised, with a personal stake in playing with a man's soul. This makes Valdemar's plight less shocking, but Carmichael, within Rathbone's barnstorming limits, is an interesting character, unable to cope with the monster he has created, and finally destroyed by it. The casting of Rathbone is a welcome stroke of genius; still the embodiment of rationalist supreme, Sherlock Holmes, our expectations are compellingly checked here.
If these two films aren't up to much, the centrepiece, 'The Black Cat', is a wonderful black comedy, which strays furthest from its source. Poe's story is one of the most horrific things I've ever read, featuring a once sensitive man who declines into alcoholism, beats his wife, gouges the eye out of, than hangs, a cat, and finally splits his wife's head open with an axe, before walling her corpse in a cellar. It's existential, metaphysical and supernatural depths are despairing to consider, its violence as repellent as literature can get.
The film, on the other hand, is as much bouncy fun as you can have. The unnamed narrator becomes Montresor Herringbone (!), embodied by a very short and fat Peter Lorre. There are moments of unpleasantness as he harrasses his wife for money, but there is little sense of crisis in his paralysis. Price is an absolute hoot as a ludicrous and effete winetaster, Fortunato - the tasting competition is comic genius - who begins an affair with Montresor's wife. Montresor finds out, and determines to revenge himself. The dispatch of Fortunato, his imprisonment, the visit of the police, Montresor's hallucination and dream, and the final revelation should all be deeply horrific, but are instead delightful fun. The playful music, the jokey fade outs, the continuous intimation than repudiating of darkness, the gleeful pantomime performances, all add to the lovely effect.
So, in TALES OF TERROR, the adaptations of Poe are a nonsense. Rigorous tales written to dramatise philosophical tenets are turned into daft melodramas. Ciphers are turned into caricatures. The most intricately constructed allegories are literalised and made to seem childishly crass. Giving characters motivations and histories make a mockery of Poe's fictional chessmanship.
But if it's bad Poe, it's terrific Corman, and sometimes his additions bring interesting variations of their own. The first and third tales are the weakest. 'Morella' ignores most of the plot of the very short tale, and deals with the events after its climax. A young woman, Lenora Locke, arrives at a derelict castle, having been sent away by her father 26 years previously after the death of her mother, for which she was somehow blamed. Her father is initially hostile, clearly insane with the grief; the house, Miss Havisham-like, is exactly as it was on the day Morella died, a banquet table wreathed in cobwebs and tarantulas, the dead woman's skeleton, unburied in her chamber. Gradually, though Locke's sanity returns through the love of his daughter, dying herself after a lifetime of bad marriages and ill-treatment by men. But Morella still demands revenge.
Corman counters Poe's misogyny by shifting the viewpoint away from the male narrator to a fermale heroine who barely exists in the tale. It is she who enters the house, experiences its horrors, restores its doomed inmate. The revenge of Morella also moves away from the narrator to this daughter, only its instrument in the story. Poe's necro-aesthetics and musing on the fragmented mind and the Ideal Soul are ignored, but there is nothing put in their place - consequently, the film doesn't make much sense. We don't understand why Morella should want to wreak revenge on someone who might have killed her as a baby.
The plot becomes dominated by the women - the heroine is killed, Morella takes her place - masculinity is impotent and goes irretrievably insane; the house of the mind goes up in flames. The film's tortuous melodramatics are uninteresting, and Vincent Price's heart doesn't seem in it, but there is remarkable narrative commentary from the wonderful music, and a brisk fluidity to Corman's filming that demands admiration.
The third film, 'The Facts Of The Case Of M. Valdemar', is perhaps closest in story to its plot, but furthest from its spirit. Poe's story about a hypnotist who managed, through mesmerism, to keep a man alive after death was written with such detachment that it was printed in a prestigious scientific journal as a true case study. That sense of experiment and report is crucial to the story's success as it reveals the paganistic powers of science, the unfathomable capabilities of the mind, and the terror of a dead man who cannot die. The mesmerist-narrator is always a detached scientist, and while his very detachment in such a case might betoken insanity, it is a far cry from the eye-rolling villainy of Basil Rathbone here, who simply wants to marry the dead man's wife.
Poe wants to show how mad calm, rational science is. Rathbone is simply demonised, with a personal stake in playing with a man's soul. This makes Valdemar's plight less shocking, but Carmichael, within Rathbone's barnstorming limits, is an interesting character, unable to cope with the monster he has created, and finally destroyed by it. The casting of Rathbone is a welcome stroke of genius; still the embodiment of rationalist supreme, Sherlock Holmes, our expectations are compellingly checked here.
If these two films aren't up to much, the centrepiece, 'The Black Cat', is a wonderful black comedy, which strays furthest from its source. Poe's story is one of the most horrific things I've ever read, featuring a once sensitive man who declines into alcoholism, beats his wife, gouges the eye out of, than hangs, a cat, and finally splits his wife's head open with an axe, before walling her corpse in a cellar. It's existential, metaphysical and supernatural depths are despairing to consider, its violence as repellent as literature can get.
The film, on the other hand, is as much bouncy fun as you can have. The unnamed narrator becomes Montresor Herringbone (!), embodied by a very short and fat Peter Lorre. There are moments of unpleasantness as he harrasses his wife for money, but there is little sense of crisis in his paralysis. Price is an absolute hoot as a ludicrous and effete winetaster, Fortunato - the tasting competition is comic genius - who begins an affair with Montresor's wife. Montresor finds out, and determines to revenge himself. The dispatch of Fortunato, his imprisonment, the visit of the police, Montresor's hallucination and dream, and the final revelation should all be deeply horrific, but are instead delightful fun. The playful music, the jokey fade outs, the continuous intimation than repudiating of darkness, the gleeful pantomime performances, all add to the lovely effect.