Directed by:
Roger CormanScreenplay:
Richard MathesonCinematography:
Floyd CrosbyComposer:
Les BaxterCast:
Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Lennie Weinrib, Basil Rathbone, Debra Paget, David Frankham, Kenner G. Kemp, Maggie Pierce, Jack Tornek, Paul Bradley, Cosmo Sardo (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
In Morella, Vincent Price plays a tormented man forced to confront a dark family secret when his long-estranged daughter tracks him down. In The Black Cat, he's the rakish lover of the wife of Peter Lorre, who naturally plots a deadly revenge. And in the title role of The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, he tries to relieve chronic pain by asking Basil Rathbone to hypnotise him, something that leaves poor Valdemar hovering on the border between the dead and the living. (Arrow Films)
(more)Reviews (2)
When in the first scene the protagonist comes out of the thick fog and walks into an old castle perched on a cliff above the sea, and inside finds an eccentric Vincent Price, I popped open the Champagne and cheered at the unprecedented originality. Really, it’s a Corman adaptation of Poe like from a copy machine, but it doesn’t really matter, because those things do have something. It’s a pity that the first story is not surprising in any interesting way, because the atmosphere is great. The second story is more black humour than horror, but still a lot of fun. The third story fizzled out during the night. 7/10
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Roger Corman and his actors did a great job, and Tales of Terror is a classic of its genre, a classic associated with the name of Edgar Allan Poe, showing that this is something that may age, but it doesn't matter at all because these films still have a specific atmosphere, given by the fact that they were shot indoors but with the intention to scare the audience. Some of the masks and special effects are very decent and have not aged at all.
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