American Gothic: Roger Corman’s Poe Cycle (1960–1964)
Aided by Vincent Price, Roger Corman dared to tread where few filmmakers would go: the works of Edgar Allen Poe
He was called “The Pope of Pop Culture” and the “King of B-movies,” giving many famous actors (Robert DeNiro, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper) and many famous directors (Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorcese, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard) their first big gigs. Corman directed 55 movies, and in between making low budget sci-fi movies (It Conquered the World, 1958) and exploitation films (Bloody Mama, 1970), Corman is best known for his Poe Cycle — eight film adaptations based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Corman loved literary adaptations, but the guerilla film maker rarely felt beholden to original source and liberally padded the short stories to make up a full plot for each feature film. The movies are doubly canonic not only because they’re the few Edgar Allan Poe movies out there, but because seven of them starred the Master of Horror himself: Vincent Price. Two of the films are outliers: The Haunted Palace (1963) uses a Edgar Allen Poe title for a H.P. Lovecraft story entitled “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”) and The Premature Burial (1962) stars Ray Milland, who isn’t much of a substitute for Vincent Price. Of the remaining six, some are relatively faithful adaptations while others only share a title with Poe’s original story, but together, they create a technicolor and dream-like world that bring Poe’s writing to life.
The Stories
In The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), a man visits his friend at his ancestral home after the death of his sister. In The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), a nobleman fears that he has killed his wife, and starts to go mad. Tales of Terror (1962) adapts three Poe stories (“Morella,” “The Black Cat“ ”plus “The Cask of Amantillado,” and “The Case of M. Valedmar”) all starring Vincent Price. In The Raven (1963), three warlocks (Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff) fight for ultimate power. The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), a man remarries but cannot forget his hauntingly beautiful first wife. And in The Masque of Red Death (1964), Prince Prospero (Price) who has sold his soul to the devil throws an enormous party while peasants are dying of the plague.
The Adaptations
It’s often been said that Edgar Allan Poe’s work doesn’t naturally lend itself to film, and few filmmakers have dared to recreate his moody atmosphere, morbid preoccupations and paranoid gothic style. Corman, however, was fascinated by the psychological aspects of Poe’s work — not only in his disturbed characters, but in his use of the Gothic environments that harkened back to an earlier of Romantic poetry. Corman saw that Poe used supernatural elements to deal with themes of insanity, loss, mystery and decay that consumed him. For Poe, the corridors of a gothic castle led into the darkness of the human mind, and Corman was eager to explore these themes with a visual medium.
The Fall of the House of Usher is perhaps Corman’s most faithful adaptation of a Pe story, but to further involve contemporary audiences in the three main characters, he added a romance between Madeline Usher and the visitor, Philipp Winthorp. As Roderick, Price’s velvet tones and bizarrely white hair indicated an aristocrat from bygone times and says his lines with an arch affectation that was instantly sinister. Corman played with the erotic subtext between siblings Roderick and the doomed Madeline; they are trapped in their noble family’s past, and Barnard, a modern man, can only helplessly observe as the mansion, symbolized the decay of their noble family, crumbles at the end. The movie manages to be scary and tragic at the same time, and its sumptuous decor would be re-used in Corman’s other movies.
Given that very little actually occurs in Poe’s story The Pit and the Pendulum, Corman departed considerably from the original. The 20 page story simply depicts a prisoner of the Inquisition as he narrowly avoids a pit and then wakes up strapped to a table as a sharp pendulum arcs slowly towards him. Corman mimicked the plot of The Fall of the House of Usher with a young Englishman (John Kerr) visiting his brother-in-law Don Medina (Price) to inquire about his sister. The castle has a literal dungeon and Medina appears to be going slowly mad, and only in the final sequence do the pit and the pendulum appear, with a deranged Medina believing that he is actually his torturer father. Corman used tinted lenses for the many flashbacks, and though the movie barely resembles the original novel, it does capture Poe’s own fear of insanity in Medina’s persecution.
Tales of Terror is a three-part anthology featuring four Poe stories, so there was less added plot. Price stars in all three anthologies, and while the movie lacks the Technicolor sparkle of its predecessors, Corman was once again more concerned the core spirit of horror in each story rather than adapting them faithfully. In “Morella,” the motif of a man unable to bury the corpse of his dead wife — and her return — remains the same and her transformation into her daughter simply becomes more literal than symbolic, with both women choosing death in the end. In “The Black Cat” Herringbone (Peter Lorre), rather than being a drug addict married to a faithful gentle wife, discovers his wife is having an affair. This adds the revenge theme needed to include The Cask of Amontillado. And in “The Facts of the Case of M. Valdemar,” Corman keeps the shocking ending — a man who is both living and dead rots in front of the narrator’s eyes. But Corman also added a romance, knowing that his movies faired better with a sexy, busty heroine like Debra Paget (in her last role before her death).
Poe’s most famous poem, “The Raven,” is about loss: a student is mourning his dead lover, Lenore when continually interrupted by a threatening bird. However, with the exception of including an actual raven, Corman’s film bears no resemblance to its original source. Instead, it is a horror-comedy featuring Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and Boris Karloff as bickering warlocks. As Dr. Craven, Price is for once a hero, not a villain, who is once again mourning a dead wife name Lenore — whose ghost Dr. Bedlo (Lorre) has seen haunting the castle of Dr. Scarabus (Karloff). Despite the presence of wizards and magic, The Raven is a mix of comedy and special effects rather than a horror film meant to scare audiences, and many critics felt it was ridiculous to even connect it to Poe’s gloomy poem. And yet, the deft screenplay and the caliber of actors (including a young, inexperienced Jack Nicholson) make it one of Corman’s most entertaining films.
Price is at his most villainous in The Masque of Red Death, playing Prince Prospero, a brutal nobleman who burns down a plague-stricken village and kidnaps a local girl Francesca (Jane Asher) to use for his own pleasure. Corman later admitted that much of the story resembled Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1958), where Death stalks a medieval night, but created a mood of foreboding and true evil among the richness of Prospero’s castle. He also incorporated elements of another Poe story, Hop-frog, or the Eight Chained Orang-outangs, as well as devil-worship and Satanism that Poe would not have dared to hint at. While the movie was not as successful as other Poe adaptations, it is often considered one of his best, as it is genuinely disquieting. Price is irredeemable villain, and with Death stalking the castle in the form of multi-colored figures, Corman combines his usual rich spectacle (filmed by then-cinematographer Nicholas Roeg) with a true sense of doom.
The Tomb of Ligeia was based on Poe’s poem “Ligeia,” once again requiring Corman to sculpt a plot around the core story of the poem of a man unable to forget his dead first wife even as he marries his second, Rowena (Elizabeth Shepard). Due to the popularity of Corman’s previous Poe’s adaptations, it was given that Vincent Price was cast in the lead as Verden Fell, the necrophiliac widower who cannot get over his first wife’s death. Hidden behind dark glasses for some mysterious eye problem, Price is solemn and reserved — a departure from his usual theatrical style. The movie was shot in the English countryside, and while Rowena is tormented by the not-quite-dead Ligeia, Corman gives her a happy ending, complete with a romance with an old beau.
Over the course of his career, Corman made nearly 400 movies, mostly independent of big studios and on very low budget, but the Poe Cycle would likely be considered his best by most critics. Corman managed to convey Poe’s melancholy and sense of terror in films in a lush and colorful way; the films are intentionally larger than life and lines are often delivered with a wink to the audience; they include romance and humor in stories that were claustrophobically oppressive. As such, he managed to create period piece thrillers that appealed to modern audiences. And while there are similarities between the films, each has a slightly different style, ranging from broadly comedic to darkly tragic. Corman would not direct another horror movie for 25 years while Vincent Price would thrive in the genre, becoming the face and voice of horror. As for Edgar Allen Poe, he would continue to inspire horror fans everywhere — but no other filmmaker would be able to bring so much of his work to the silver screen.
