I’m watching all the Corman film adaptions of Edgar Allan Poe. So far, I’ve seen The Pit and the Pendulum, The Premature Burial, and* The Masque of the Red Death*
These are quite good. Burial didn’t have Vincent Price, but it was still an above average movie. Masque has been my favorite so far. Vincent Price did an excellent job as Prospero and the cinematography was amazing.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the films.
It’s not really one of Corman’s Poe movies but Witchfinder General was retitled The Conqueror Worm for its American release to take advantage of the popularity of the series. Normally this would be a sign to avoid the movie as a rip-off but in this case Witchfinder General is well worth watching for its own merits.
How many of them use the same stock footage of the fire destroying the home? When I was in college, we had Vincent Price come speak and they showed about 6 of his films in the three days before. I got awful familiar with the scenes from the fire and what burned next.
Favorite line from Price’s speech. He said he went to see “Mystery of the Wax Museum” in the theater when it came out. In front of him were three teenage girls shivering with fear throughout it. At the end, Price leaned forward and in an especially exaggerated voice asks “Did you like it?” He added Gregarin and Shephard weren’t the first people in space, those girls jumped so high they were.
I really love The Raven … Price, Karloff and Lorre have amazing comedic timing in that movie. Or at least the ability to take direction =)
I’ll second that.
I saw this as a kid, and now own it on DVD. It’s on aMidnight Movies disk, along with “Comedy of Terrors.” “The Raven” has long been a sentimental favorite. Lorre was great in a comedic role.
In his book “How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime”, Corman discusses filming that building fire, noting that it never occurred to him that people would be able to take movies home, watch them back to back & notice the same clips of the fire.
Don’t you mean “House of Wax”?
Re the Corman-Price-Poe films, two other faux Poe’s are “The Haunted Palace” which is really Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” and “Cry of the Banshee” which is really a British film that was given a Poe label (tho not a real title) when AIP became its US distributor.
Three other great Price films that are not in the Corman-Poe family: The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, and Theatre of Blood.
My favorite Poe-Price: Masque, of course, with Pit as a close second, tho Usher was better I will admit.
Least favorite: I’ve never been able watch “The Tomb of Ligeia” all the way through.
Ah, Comedy of Terrors is another one I absolutely love as well =)
Vincent Price has to be one of my absolute favorite actors from the old Hollywood Contract days. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to meet him and discuss cooking [and other things, but he was apparently a very noted gourmet chef in his own right] over a long saturday of cooking and eating. sigh
Although I also really like Peter Lorre, I always thought that he never got the notice he was due. My favorite Lorre movie is M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder.
Corman may have never thought about people buying movies and watching them back to back, but I saw all his Poe films in theaters when they were originally released. Even though they came out years apart, by the time of “The Raven”, I recognized the burning footage as something I’d seen before.