What a COOL film! Very different feel to the other 7 Corman-Poe films, perhaps because it's really an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward". Corman hated repeating himself, but AIP kept saying "Do another Poe film!" TALES OF TERROR was an anthology-- 4 stories adapted into 3 segments (tricky how they combined 2 similar stories into one, although, I noted how the film version LOST some of the "logic" of both originals), and THE RAVEN was done with a lot of humor. This time out, Corman wanted to do another writer... but the studio STILL wanted Poe, so they changed the title to market it AS a "Poe", and had Vincent Price reciting lines from the poem of the title to reinforce it.
Price-- Lon Chaney Jr.-- Elisha Cook-- and a number of other less-known characters actors I recognized (but don't recall by name). What a cool cast. I know Lovecraft had some running themes in a number of his stories, about "the elder gods" who ruled Earth in the dim past who wanted to return and used men to try and "open the gates". This film really encapsulates all of that so perfectly, I don't think I've ever seen a better use of the themes, except perhaps in Archie Goodwin's VAMPIRELLA comics (which in turn were, I feel, SWIPED by the 1st BLADE movie!!).
Compared to all the "characters" he created in the other films, Price almost seems to be playing HIMSELF this time-- at least, when he's Ward. When he's Ward's ancestor-- returned as a ghost and POSSESSING Ward, then he's like Price, "plus". There's a scene where the guy, who can't seem to get rid of "Ward's wife", decides to "exercise his husbandly perogative"-- and as the scene progresses, I was reminded of the behind-the-scenes stuff on FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED, where, legend has it, someone said, "This part's kinda dull. How about a RAPE scene?" In Price's case, it never goes too far, but it definitely works. The doctor character who befriends the Wards keeps coming up with logical, "rational" psychological reasons for what's going on-- but I feel sure the wife believed her husband REALLY WAS possessed by someone else. Which he was!
By the way, if you've ever seen it, NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS-- the 2nd DS film, the one with David Selby & Kate Jackson-- is really an updated swipe of THE HAUNTED PALACE. The DS film ends badly and pointlessly... It was only later when I saw PALACE the 1st time, that I realized the stories were almost identical. Except-- where NoDS ends, that's the point where PALACE really gets good! PALACE also has a "bad" ending-- but it's a much more SATISFYING one. |
The Haunted Palace / The Tower of London dvd movie.