Guy Carrell—the Earl of Glencave, no less—suffers from a morbid fear of being buried alive, brought on by a family history of catalepsy. He even constructs a special tomb for himself with several escape routes, including a poisoned chalice if all else fails. He marries the beautiful Emily Gault (played by Hazel Court), who not surprisingly brings back his love of the purely physical life. Emily even persuades him to destroy the custom-built mausoleum. . . . “And then there was silence in the darkness of Guy’s mind” (105).
The 1966 Corgi collection, The Premature Burial and Other Tales of Horror, was edited by the ever-popular Anon. It has no actual connection to the Corman movie, being what some collectors call an “inferred tie-in” book. The other seven stories are by the likes of Henry James (“Sir Edmund Orme”) and Robert Louis Stevenson (“Thrawn Janet”). I mention this for your information only.
Ironically, Nicholson and Arkoff turned up on the set to inform Corman that AIP had bought the production rights to The Premature Burial from Pathé Laboratories and that he was now firmly back in their tight little fold. He quickly marked his return with a film variously entitled Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Terror, Poe’s Tales of Terror, or Tales of Terror (1962).
Tales of Terror is an “anthology” film à la the British classic Dead of Night, directed by the Brazilian-born Alberto Cavalcanti in 1945. Although only three stories are credited, “The Black Cat” episode incorporates elements from “The Cask of Amontillado.” The other two stories used were “Morella” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” Richard Matheson expressed his gratitude at not having to pad out Poe’s minimalist plot lines to feature length.
Apart from Vincent Price, the film made great play with veteran actors Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone. Lorre made a strong comic impression as the drunken Montresor in “The Black Cat.” Corman later explained: “It was the first time I had introduced humor in the Poe series. To be honest, I did it because I was growing tired of the standard Poe formula.” The new approach went down very well indeed at the box office.
Lancer published the tie-in adaptation book (71-325, 1962) by Eunice Sudak. I’d like to tell you more about Sudak, who caught the commingled Poe and Matheson styles perfectly, but I couldn’t find very much of anything to tell you about her. Robert Reginald’s seminal Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, 1975–1991 offers only: “Sudak, Eunice (R.) 1926?—).” wiki.feministsf.net offers only “Gender-ambiguous name for woman author.” Eunice Sudak remains a real “woman of mystery”—for the time being, at any rate.
Lancer reversed the story order, putting “Valdemar” first and “Morella” last; Sudak was probably working from an early shooting script. Corman made the right decision so far as the film was concerned, because “Morella” is one of Poe’s most weak-tea stories. I like the way Sudak rounded off her adaptation: “. . . he who told it first, and published it in the early spring of 1835, saw in himself the spirit of Morella’s husband. His name was Edgar Allan Poe.” The cheeky minx!
“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” is one of the first fictional treatments of hypnosis—or Mesmerism, as it was called then (after Anton Mesmer). M. Valdemar is kept alive at the very point of death until Mother Nature eventually retakes Her mortal course. Poe implies and Sudak states that the story is set in Harlem, New York, so the M. stands for the Dutch “meneer” rather than the French “monsieur.” Valdemar/Price comes to a sticky end: “AND THERE WAS AN OOZING LIQUID PUTRESCENCE—ALL THAT REMAINED OF M. ERNEST VALDEMAR.”
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Sudak is at her best in the best terrible tale, Matheson’s masterful fusion of “The Black Cat” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” The ne’er-do-well Montresor is an alcoholic who abuses his wife and beats her cat. He bests the arrogant fop Fortunato in a madcap wine-tasting contest. Fortunato meets Mrs. Montresor and carries on with her under the cuckold’s own roof. The good humor turns deepest black when the hapless husband finds out and walls them up in his cellar. “For the love of God, Montresor!” pleads the wine-befuddled but now thoroughly awake Fortunato. “Yes,” says Montresor, as he cements the last brick into place. “For the love of God.” He’d have been better off shouting “Here, Kitty, Kitty!”
Tales of Terror might or might not have inspired Histoires Extraordinaires (France, 1968), another Poe tripartite effort codirected by Roger Vadim (“Metzengerstein”), Federico Fellini (“Toby Dammit”), and Louis Malle (“William Wilson”). It featured Jane and Peter Fonda, Terence Stamp, Alain Delon, Brigitte Bardot, and James Robertson Justice. AIP handled the English-language distribution of this unjustly neglected film, as Spirits of the Dead, and Vincent Price provided a linking narration. New English Library published a tie-in book entitled Fantastic Tales (London, 1969, which also referenced the movie version of The Oblong Box (see far below). The cover showed Jane Fonda in her best belly-button mode.
IV.
Eunice Sudak did even better at novel length with her adaptation of Corman’s next Poe movie, The Raven (Lancer 70-034, 1963). Richard Matheson’s screenplay had very little to do with the classic source poem and neither did the novelization, but only ivory-tower academics cared about that minor detail.
Price, Karloff, and Lorre played three very different sorcerers in medieval England (Doctors Erasmus Craven, Scarabus, and Bedlo, respectively) caught up in a duel of magic with Karloff over Price’s mourned but far from dead wife, Lenore (ably embodied by Hazel Court). A boyish actor called Jack Nicholson took on the faithful-son role of Rexford Bedlo. And Olive Sturgess rounded out the cast well as Estelle Craven, daughter of Erasmus.
The Raven was like a Carry On Poe movie throughout most of its fast-moving 86 minutes. Sudak followed suit gleefully. For just one example: “And now Estelle was against the wall. She could do nothing—nothing but scream. And scream she did—so loudly and so shrilly that her father grumbled in his sleep, and closing his eyes, rolled over to sleep on his other side” (46).
“We had to play The Raven for laughs,” Corman explained, “because both Richard Matheson, our writer, and I were getting tired of the stock Poe pictures. As it turned out, this film was the most fun we ever had on a Poe picture. It had the biggest look of them all up until that time and certainly was the most colorful, with the sorcerers’ duel at the end filled with lightning bolts and fireballs.”
Eunice Sudak went on to novelize Corman’s now cult science-fiction movie, X—The Man with the X-Ray Eyes for Lancer Books (70-052, 1963: entitled simply X) based on the screenplay by Robert Dillon and Ray Russell. The film was released in Britain as The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. Ray Milland deserved another Oscar under whatever title.
The Poe-jaded Corman had already decided to film H. P. Lovecraft’s 1927 short novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward as The Haunted Village. AIP gave him the go-ahead—with the stipulation that it be marketed as yet another Poe movie, with a title change to The Haunted Palace. “The Haunted Palace” was a poem recited by Roderick Usher, and—went the executive logic—they’d already turned “The Raven” into cinematic gold, so . . ..
Vincent Price played both Charles Dexter Ward and his eighteenth-century warlock ancestor, who was burned at the stake. The other major cast members were Debra Paget (Mrs. Ann Ward) and veteran horror actor Lon Chaney, Jr. (the Igoresque Simon Orne). Apart from Price quoting two lines from Poe’s typically mournful poem, the film is a faithful rendition of the Lovecraft novella. There is no palace, by the way. Lancer didn’t bother with a tie-in edition. The Haunted Palace bears no close relationship with Edgar Allan Poe, which is the shape of AIP things to come.
Never say “Nevermore” again. After an unhappy experience mounting The Secret Invasion (a war movie that “anticipated” The Dirty Dozen by almost three years), Corman rejoined AIP to make The Masque of the Red Death (1964). This time, however, he had the unaccustomed luxury of a five-week shooting schedule at Elstree Studios in England, using spectacular sets left over from Becket and A Man for All Seasons. Another big plus was his cinema
tographer, Nicholas Roeg, who later directed such classic movies as Don’t Look Now (1973) and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).
Vincent Price gives his most finely nuanced performance in all the Poe movies as Prince Prospero, a sixteenth-century Italian nobleman who worships Satan and promises immunity from the Red Death in his castle to selected disciples. He embodies the truism that every man is the hero of his own life story. Hazel Court again plays the femme fatale, Juliana, who contrasts vividly with the devout Christian girl Francesca (Jane Asher). John Westbrook (uncredited) matches Price as the well-spoken Red Death himself.
Corman wasn’t satisfied with the original screenplay by Charles Beaumont, then undergoing a slow death from Alzheimer’s disease. He called upon R. Wright Campbell (1927–2000), who had written Fives Guns West back in 1954 for the princely sum of $200. Robert Campbell would later become famous as the author of In La-La Land We Trust (1986) and its several sequels. It was the best-ever script for an AIP/Corman film, incorporating Poe’s revenge fable “Hop-Frog” (albeit with a pointless name-change to Hop-Toad).
Elsie Lee chose to drop the “Lee Sheridan” pseudonym for her Masque of the Red Death novelization (Lancer 72-725, 1964). It starts off well enough, with some evocative mood and scene setting, but the author obviously didn’t have access to the final shooting script. The last few chapters seem rushed, which they probably were. I’m also surprised that she didn’t use Poe’s perfect last line: “And darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
Lee also wrote the Lancer Books novelization of The Comedy of Terrors (70-067, 1964), a comedy-horror spoof about conniving undertakers played by Vincent Price and Peter Lorre. Karloff and Rathbone were also in the cast. It was deftly directed by Jacques Tourneur—of whom more anon—and written by Richard Matheson (his AIP swan song). I feel sure that Poe would have approved of both the film and its print incarnation.
The Lancer Corman/Poe novelizations were readily available in Britain at 2/6 or 3/6 (imported by Thorpe & Porter, Ltd.), obviating the need for any UK editions. Panther Books did, however, bring out The Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales of Horror (No. 1755, October 1964), edited by Michael Sissons. Vincent Price and Jane Asher were featured on the cover photographs. There was a simultaneous hardcover volume from Anthony Gibbs & Phillips. The twelve-strong contents list included such dazzling gems as “The Town Where No One Got Off” by Ray Bradbury and “The Other Place” by J. B. Priestley.
The Tomb of Ligeia (1965), the last of the Corman-directed AIP movies, was also made in England and starred Vincent Price as the widow-haunted Verden Fell. It has also been titled Ligeia, Last Tomb of Ligeia, or Tomb of the Cat. Its intensively recomplicated script was written by Robert Towne, who later exceeded even this effort with Chinatown (1974). There were no tie-in editions, on either side of the Atlantic.
V.
Rumors had it that Corman was planning to film “The Gold Bug” and “A Descent into the Maelstrom”—but neither project ever got beyond the talking-up stage (despite a reference to the former in the back-cover blurb of Fantastic Tales). Digit’s Descent into the Maelstrom (R512, 1961) was another random sampler: Contents included “Ms. Found in a Bottle,” “Mellonta Tauta,” “The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade,” “The Oblong Box,” “The Spectacles,” “X-ing a Paragrab,” “The Imp of the Perverse,” “The Balloon Hoax,” “Morella,” “The Oval Portrait,” “King Pest,” and “Hop-Frog.” Rainey (another one-name artist) contributed a great “perfect storm” cover.
Those four Poe compilation volumes turned out to be nice little earners for small-time Digit Books. The company is still in business today, as Brown, Watson (Leicester) Ltd., mostly publishing books and annuals for the juvenile market.
And that was that, so far as Roger Corman directing films based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe was concerned. He directed several more movies over the next five years, including The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) and Von Richtofen and Brown (1970: The Red Baron in Britain), before making a radical career move. It would take another article for me to summarize Corman’s long production-distribution stint with New World and Concorde-New Horizon Pictures. I’ll just say that he kick started the Hollywood careers of such luminaries as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.
He made a one-shot return to directing with the immodestly titled Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound (1990), from the 1973 novel by Brian W. Aldiss. The budget probably equaled that of all his Poe films put together, but it hardly broke even at the box office, and the critical reactions were mixed. Michael Hutchence, the soon-to-be-late lead singer of INXS, played Percy Bysshe Shelley. A case of too much Corman, and not enough Aldiss?
All things considered, Roger Corman has been a major influence on cinematic fantasy and science fiction, and his Media Guest of Honor spot at the Worldcon in 1996 was very well deserved. Writer Guest of Honor James White told me that Corman was keen on filming his Sector General series, but nothing has ever come of it—not yet, anyway.
VI.
AIP was loath to give up on the money-making “Poe cycle.” In 1965, they took another one of his poems, “The City in the Sea,” and turned it into City Under the Sea, a movie that owed more to Jules Verne than it did to Poe. It was the last film directed by veteran Jacques Tourneur (1904–1977), who made the classic Night of the Demon (1957). Vincent Price played an ill-fated sea captain. He recited the poem in melancholy tones. For some unfathomable (pun intended) reason, its American title was changed to War-Gods of the Deep.
Witchfinder General (1968), starring a seldom-better Vincent Price as the all too real English Civil War sadist Matthew Hopkins, was entitled The Conqueror Worm in America (after one of Poe’s most necrophiliac poems). The Oblong Box (1969) had even less to do with the original work, a mediocre short story. Sphere Books published an oblique tie-in edition (London, 1970), which was culled from a Kurt Singer anthology entitled Tales of the Uncanny (W. H. Allen, London, 1968). This time, Price did not give of his histrionic best. Their final attempt was a feeble remake of Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971), with Jason Robards, Jr. and Herbert Lom.
Nicholson and Arkoff finally made some films openly based upon Lovecraft stories. Monster of Terror/Die, Monster, Die (1965: adapted by Jerry Sohl from “The Colour Out of Space”) and The Dunwich Horror (1970) were both directed by Corman’s regular art director Daniel Haller. They are well-worth a look just for that.
The 1988 take on House of Usher was updated to the present day and starred Oliver Reed as Roderick Usher. Corman himself produced an ill-advised remake of The Masque of the Red Death in 1989, with a largely no-name cast. As Leonard Maltin says: “Despite an interesting approach to figure of the Red Death and a literate (if talky) script, overall cheapness and very slow pace cripple this medieval melodrama.”
It could be said that Corman set off what scientists are pleased to call a synergistic reaction, where the total effect is greater than the sum of the individual effects. He had great actors—not just movie stars—such as Price, Karloff, Lorre, and Rathbone. Writers like Matheson, Beaumont, Russell, and Campbell were experts at bricklaying coherent plots from the sometimes flimsy straw bequeathed to them by Poe. A back sound-stage crew to die for: Daniel Haller, Floyd Crosby, and even Nick Roeg. Talk about reaching critical mass! No one can make this episode of cinematic history repeat itself—not even Roger Corman.
The films also inspired an exceptional series of tie-in editions that are becoming more collectable by the year. If I may make so bold as to misquoth the raven—“Evermore.”
* * *
Graham Andrews lives in Rhode-Saint-Genese, Belgium.
Works Discussed
Corgi Books
The Premature Burial and Other Tales of Horror (1966)
Digit Books
The Fall of the House of Usher (1961)
The Pit and the Pendulum (1962)
Lancer Books
The Pit and the Pendulum, by Lee Sheri
dan (1961)
The Premature Burial, by Max Hallan Danne (1962)
Poe’s Tales of Terror, by Eunice Sudak (1962)
The Raven, by Eunice Sudak (1963)
The Masque of the Red Death, by Elsie Lee (1964)
New English Library
Fantastic Tales (1969)
Pan Books
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1960) Different editions feature tie-in blurbs for The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum
Panther Books
The Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales of Horror, edited by Michael Sissons (1964)
Associational
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Dent’s Everyman Library, UK, 1903)
The Gold Bug (Digit, UK, 1960)
Descent into the Maelstrom (Digit, UK, 1961)
The Premature Burial and Other Tales of Horror (Corgi, UK, 1966)
The Oblong Box & Other Tales of the Uncanny (Sphere, London, 1970), edited by Kurt Singer
Works Cited
Ackroyd, Peter. Poe: A Life Cut Short. London: Chatto & Windus, 2008.
Arkoff, Samuel Z. and Richard Trubo. Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants: From the Man Who Brought You I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Muscle Beach Pary. New York: Birch Lane Press, 1992.
Corman, Roger, and Jim Jerome. How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. New York: Random House, 1990.
di Franco, J. Phillip. The Movie World of Roger Corman. New York: Chelsea House, 1979.
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