“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 to a stage actress in Boston. He would become an itinerant literary icon, living up and down the east coast, taking any writing or editorial jobs he could. While it’s popular these days to portray Poe as a drunken and haggard wastrel, his life was much richer than that. His work is constantly republished, adapted, and performed. His stories have never gone out of style, though the films they inspired have varied wildly.
Poe died in 1849 under mysterious circumstances. When moving pictures emerged in the early 20th century, his tales were some of the first to be committed to silent film, including a (sort of) biographical sketch directed by D. W. Griffith in 1909.
This trippy version of The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) is clearly inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
Poe got a distinctly Art Deco treatment in the Bela Lugosi adaptation of The Black Cat (1934).
Once the schlock of Hammer Films became all the rage in the 1960s, Poe’s stories were well-known, popular (and public domain) fodder for low-budget double feature horror pulp.
Fairly silly, they do recall a certain nostalgia for stumbling across one of these on the television on a random Saturday night. Gratuitous and devoid of any of the real genius behind Poe’s writing, there is something enjoyable about watching a film knowing it’s going to be pretty bad: it can’t disappoint, and you can only be pleasantly surprised.
The Masque of the Red Death and The Premature Burial (1962) are from the stalwart horror director Roger Corman.
In the first film, Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) is a wealthy noble who lives a life of decadence, even as a plague decimates his kingdom. In The Premature Burial, Ray Milland plays the character afraid of being buried alive—so much so that he becomes unnaturally obsessed with it. The films take the basic concepts of the Poe stories, then add unsavory details.
In 2015, director Raul Garcia released Extraordinary Tales, an animated compendium of Poe classics. Each story is narrated by a different actor and has its own animation style. Voices include Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Julian Sands, Guillermo del Toro, and, of course, Roger Corman. On the menu are adaptations of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” and “The Masque of the Red Death.” — Watch the trailer
Kate Beckinsale, Jim Sturgess, and Ben Kingsley lead a cast of familiar faces in the 2014 film loosely based on the Poe story “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” Stonehearst Asylum taps into the well-worn genre of late Victorian insane asylum-meets-psychological horror. An otherwise average movie is strengthened by quality actors and excellent production design.
Originally written for DVD Netflix