Recently, for the first time, I saw three movies--House of Usher(1960), The Haunted Palace (1963), Tomb of Ligeia (1964)--that had four things in common: 1.) tenuously based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe; 2.) produced and directed by Roger Corman; 3.) starred Vincent Price; and (SPOILER WARNING!) 4.) they all end with a big out of control fire! Maybe the SAME fire, for all I could tell. Obviously, if it took me this long to get around to seeing them, Im no true blue devotee of the series. Still, I enjoyed them well enough, to varying degrees. I think I liked The Haunted Palace best, partially because of its H.P. Lovecraft storyline, partially because it provided the sole opportunity to see Lon Chaney Jr. work alongside Vincent Price, and partially because the plot allowed Price a chance to play a charming good guy for a fair portion of the flick before being possessed by his evil ancestor. House of Usher was quite effectively atmospheric as well--though an unexplained plot hole bothered me throughout the entire film: a young man shows up at the house of Usher, purporting to be the fiancee of the younger sister of Roderick Usher (Price), a girl he met and whose heart he won while she was in Boston. The question I have--given how Price is reluctant to even allow his sibling to leave her room, much less their manor, how in the world did she ever break free long enough to spend enough time in Boston to fall in love and make friends, friends her young man alludes to more than once? Prices character, maniacal in his protectiveness from the very instant we first meet him, never addresses the fact that hed earlier blithely let sis wander so far from home for such a long period of time! Yeah, yeah, I know--Im reading WAY too much into an otherwise decently written piece of gothic creepiness, but still, it bothered me. As for Tomb of Ligeia--a clip of which turned up briefly, a few days later, in Mean Streets--I liked Prices sunglasses and enjoyed seeing him sans moustache for a change.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 17:55:31 +0000
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