Monday, April 29, 2013

TALES OF TERROR 1962 (TGG GROUP)

Another Roger Corman winner.

Roger Corman directed this trilogy of tales from Edgar Allan Poe. The first is Morella about a woman who is possessed by the spirit of her dead mother as she seeks revenge on the man she married played by Vincent Price.

The second tale stars Peter Lorre, Price and Joyce Jameson and is entitled The Black Cat. A drunk challenges a wine taster to a contest and finds the man more attracted to his wife than to wine so he kills them both, but gets a big surprise in the end. Lorre plays the role of the drunk very well and Price is the expert wine taster named Fortunato and Jameson is the long suffering wife.

The final tale is the best and is called The Case Of M Valdemar in which Price plays a man who is dying and Basil Rathbone is a hypnotist who captures Valdemar's soul just at the point of death and keeps him hostage in his own body in order to blackmail his gorgeous wife, played by Debra Paget into becoming Rathbone's new wife. The ending has the dead Price rising from his bed and melting as he strangles Rathbone. As a child when I first saw this, it made one heck of an impression.

Not a bad way to spend 90 minutes and the cast is top notch and the stories are all well done.

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