Tales of Terror (1962)
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We have 3 stories based on Edgar Allen Poe short stories…
1) Morella – Lenora comes back home after a 26 year absence to see her dad, who has hated her since her birth. Her dad is not happy to see her but soon realizes that he might be able to ease both their pains as Lenora is dying of an incurable disease. But Lenora’s mother, Morella, isn’t quite as dead as everything thinks she is and she’ll have a say in who dies and who doesn’t. 2) Black Cat – Fortunato is a fall-down drunk who enjoys drinking toe xcess and treating his wife and cat with disrespect. Well, one day he meets a wine expert who then meets Fortunato’s wife and soon the wife doesn’t care how often the drunk spends away from home. But Fortunato has his own theory of revenge… 3) Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar – Mr. Valdemar is dying and hates the idea of death. He is convinced from his doctor to undergo a mesmerism procedure that would forestall or completely stop death. But Ms. Valdemar doesn’t trust the doctor farther than she can run from him and soon she’ll realize what the doctor really wants to do. Overall: Let’s just say that none of the 3 stories remotely come close to the stories they are named after. In “Morella,” the narrator husband actually hated his wife towards the end and the daughter always lived with the father. Now we have the father living with his wife and the daughter as the cause of the death of the mother...not exactly the same. In and of itself, it was just ok. In “Black Cat,” the story is really about a guy who begins to turn nasty once he gets a cat in the house and soon kills the cat and then has to deal with a 2nd one, leading up to the murder of his wife, whom he buries in the wall of his house. The ending to the film is the same but they get there in totally different ways. I really enjoyed Price & Lorre’s performances though. In “Valdemar,” the story is about hypnosis (mesmerization) and just about how this could affect death. The film adds conspiracies about the doctor and the woman he wants to marry but Poe’s story is more about ceasing death, not a forbidden love. Price doesn’t get a full use in the film and this story is just nothing special. |
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