Of the series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations Roger Corman made in the early 1960s, the only one not to feature Vincent Price. Contractual issues with American International led Corman to go with Ray Milland as leading man, a change that makes all the difference, though not in a good way. A far more naturalistic actor than the positively rococo Price, Corman’s typically back-loaded horror structure needs Price’s over-scaled, campy style to get us thru the narrative filler of Corman’s embalmed first and second acts, vamping to extend the short story or poem he used as starting point. Milland works the thin material for what it is, too honest an actor for the film’s good. To Price, it’s all fodder for personality & vocal tics; perfectly in step with Corman’s take on Poe . . . for better or worse.* (Milland’s own strengths worked better on non-Poe Corman projects.) Here, the story has Milland newly married in spite of an obsession with death and his irrational fear of being buried alive, as he believes happened to his father. The script tosses in a bit of psychological ‘gaslighting’ to goose the narrative, but only comes fully to life in an amusingly morbid last act, with a coffin-bound Milland coming back to seek revenge. The guys he really should have gone after were the art & set decorators who apparently learned their trade at Motel 6.
DOUBLE-BILL: *See PIT AND THE PENDULUM/’61 for a good example of their symbiotic relationship.
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