Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.
One day in the past, Roger Corman probably did metaphorical backflips when Vincent Price decided to work with him on a number of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations. The Masque of the Red Death is still one of Corman’s best movies. That doesn’t say much at first when you realize the kind of movies Corman makes, but Masque is actually a lot of fun. Corman doing Poe stories is his natural wheelhouse, so I’m always interested in this kind of film. Tales of Terror is a Corman-lead troika of Poe stories (actually there are kind of four stories here) that feature the horror movie legends of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and Basil Rathbone.
Tales of Terror runs a spare 90 minutes, which gives us a skosh under 30 minutes for each of the three stories. The first, “Morella”, is probably not a story with which you are familiar, but when you hear the set-up, you’ll know immediately that it’s Poe. A young woman (Maggie Pierce) arrives to visit her father (Vincent Price), who she has not seen for years. He sent her away as an infant, because her mother, Morella (Leona Gage), died just after childbirth. Since this is a Poe story, he’s naturally kept the body. The daughter reveals that she is dying, and this somehow brings the corpse of Morella back to life.
