The best and worst Edgar Allan Poe adaptations

In the early 1960s, Roger Corman and Vincent Price collaborated on a series of films, most of which were based on works by Poe. Tomb Of Ligeia was the eighth and final film in their series. While it was their least successful, both critically and financially, it still bears the hallmarks of Corman and Price’s campy, theatrical approach to filmmaking, and features some of the most beautiful locations and cinematography of their entire run. What holds it back is the overly complicated, heavily expository narrative about a widower whose plans to move on with a new love are interrupted by a malevolent black cat possessed by the spirit of his dead wife, Ligeia. It’s also somewhat hampered by the fact that the short story that inspired the film, while popular during Poe’s lifetime, has been eclipsed over the years by his other works and feels a bit stodgy now.

Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, the men behind two of Universal’s legendary movie monsters, teamed up for the first time for this tale of fright vaguely inspired by the Poe short story of the same name. The Black Cat came out just a few months before Hollywood started enforcing the Production Code that would have prohibited a lot of its more disturbing content, including a scene in which a character is flayed alive. Stylistically, it fits right in with Universal’s 1930s horror classics, linking the play of light and shadow to themes of innocence versus malice. Lugosi and Karloff are worthy foes, each trying to outmaneuver the other while the fate of a random honeymooning couple hangs in the balance.

A common solution to the problem of Poe’s stories being too short to properly adapt into a feature film has been to combine several of them into an anthology. That’s what Roger Corman and Vincent Price did in Tales Of Terror, mixing in bits and pieces from a handful of Poe’s works—including “Morella,” “The Black Cat,” “The Cask Of Amontillado,” and “The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar”—into three distinct sequences (all starring Price in different roles). Basil Rathbone and Peter Lorre are also along for the ride, which traverses a wide swath of genres, from horror to farce to melodrama. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but still a must-see for completionists of the series.

Memorable not just for its extraordinary title, this giallo film from Italian director Sergio Martino is a sumptuous, sex-fueled descent into madness. Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key is ostensibly a murder mystery centered around a degenerate author whose mistresses keep turning up dead and the effect it has on his mentally unstable wife, but really it’s a showcase for the kinds of sensationalized violence and thrills you might expect from the genre. This is yet another project that supposedly pays homage to “The Black Cat,” only to take the original story as more a suggestion than a road map. At least it uses the story’s shocking ending to great effect.

Unquestionably Poe’s most famous poem, “The Raven” has served as the inspiration for lots of films and TV episodes, an impressive achievement for a work that clocks in at just over 1,000 words and has only a sliver of a plot to build a script around. Most adaptations bear little resemblance to the source material (this tends to happen a lot when it comes to Poe). This version from Roger Corman and Vincent Price also plays fast and loose with the tone, offering more laughs than you’d expect considering the gloominess of the original poem. Joining Price are established screen legends Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre (as the Raven in the title), and future screen legend Jack Nicholson.

There’s a rich history of animated shorts based on Poe, but this relatively recent effort from director Raul Garcia brings several of them together to become more than the sum of its parts. For Extraordinary Tales, Garcia employs wildly different animation styles for each of the five tales, which include “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar,” “The Pit And The Pendulum,” and “The Masque Of The Red Death.” They are narrated directly from the source material by Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi (based on recordings made before his death), Julian Sands, Guillermo del Toro, and even Roger Corman. Though some of the shorts are more successful than others, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more artistic and faithful rendering of the Poe’s work.

Mike Flanagan has some recent competition for the best modern take on “The Fall Of The House Of Usher” in this creepfest from first-time filmmaker Patrick Picard. The Bloodhound is propelled by a constant sense of tension amplified by Joe Adler’s unsettling performance as the present-day iteration of Poe’s Roderick Usher, called J.P. in this version. Liam Aiken stands in for the narrator, who pays a visit to his old friend after receiving word that J.P. and his twin sister are not doing well following the death of their father. Though it’s more of a spiritual adaptation than a literal one, Picard zeroes in on Poe’s metaphorical concept of the physical manifestation of a crumbling psyche and makes the film feel as relevant and off-putting as the story was when Poe first came up with it.

As far as definitive versions of “The Fall Of The House Of Usher” go, this is still the standard by which all adaptations will inevitably be measured. House Of Usher was the first of the Poe adaptations by Roger Corman and Vincent Price, and though it takes some liberties with the original story it’s probably the most faithful of the series. Had it not been well received by its target audience, that might have been the end of their collaboration. Fortunately, Corman’s particular brand of schlock translated through Price’s velvety yet sinister delivery was a winning formula. The film is still remembered as not only one of the best of the Corman-Price team-ups, but a classic of low-budget, Gothic horror.

Poe’s tale of torture during the Spanish inquisition was the basis for The Pit And The Pendulum, the second film from Corman and Price, and they took a twisted delight in reimagining it with the help of screenwriter Richard Matheson. The titular torture device and the 16th-century Spanish setting are pretty much the only elements Matheson used from the short story of the same name. He also incorporated some of Poe’s other favorite literary devices, like a living character entombed behind a bricked-up wall. This was the film that cemented the partnership between Corman, Price, and their posthumous third collaborator, Poe. Its rich visual aesthetic, exaggerated camera movements, and stagey performances set the tone for the rest of the series and influenced a generation of horror creators, from Stephen King to Dario Argento.

Roger Corman and Vincent Price reached the apex of their collaboration with The Masque Of The Red Death, a lush medieval horror-fantasy. Set in the 12th century and incorporating elements of the short story it’s named for, plus another Poe story titled “Hop Frog,” it pits good against evil at the court of Prince Prospero (Price). Prospero is a Satanist who shelters from a plague in his grand castle while peasants are dropping dead beyond the walls—except the ones he kidnaps for thrills. From its saturated color palette to Price’s over-the-top performance, the film is a banquet of unrestrained excess (as much as Corman could get away with on a limited budget) that’s striking to look at and constantly entertaining.

Poe’s work has been translated into every language, and has been the source of many good-to-great foreign films. The Snake Pit And The Pendulum is not one of those. Following Roger Corman and Vincent Price’s successful run of Poe adaptations, German horror film director Harald Reinl took on “The Pit And The Pendulum,” changing the location to 18th century Germany and the torture of the Spanish Inquisition for a sentence of being drawn and quartered. Christopher Lee stars as Count Regula, who receives the punishment after killing 12 maidens, then comes back to life in search of revenge. Reinl doesn’t seem to get Poe at all, and his directing style is not suited to the author’s work. The results are more silly than terrifying (and not in the good way).

The Haunted Palace makes our worst list for the unforgivable crime of slapping the title of a poem by Poe (which he repurposed in “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”) onto an adaptation of The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft. If that were the extent of it, that would be bad enough, but there are Poe references dropped into the film for no reason. They certainly don’t add to the story. Perhaps Lovecraft was less known in 1963 than he is now, but looking back with the hindsight that his name and work have come to carry just as much weight as Poe’s, the decision not to acknowledge him as the author of the story is unforgivable.

It’s no secret that Poe was a bit obsessed with the terror of being buried alive. It crops up in his works again and again. Despite initially being marketed with his name above the title, Edgar Allan Poe’s Buried Alive, this film set at an all-girls school for juvenile delinquents retains little of the author’s Gothic romanticism or literary sensibilities. This mediocre thriller starring Robert Vaughn, Donald Pleasence, John Carradine, and Nia Long loses interest in anything to do with the author early on (there are black cats and characters on the edge of sanity) and quickly devolves into a dull slasher film with cheesy dialogue and an uninspired, predictable outcome.

There’s a strange tendency among those who set out to adapt Poe to cast him as a character in his own stories. You see this a lot, especially when it comes to the thinner tales that need to be filled out for length. One of the most egregious examples is The Raven, a forgettable crime thriller starring John Cusack as Poe. When a series of killings in Baltimore appears to mimic the deaths in his writings, the police bring in Poe for questioning. The ways in which the ridiculous plot repurposes some of Poe’s greatest works is a travesty and a disgrace to the author’s good name.

The same husband-and-wife team that made a series of infamous exploitation films with titles like Marihuana and Narcotic! came up with Maniac, a bizarre adaptation of “The Black Cat,” with elements of other Poe stories like “Murders In The Rue Morgue” also tossed in for some reason. Sometimes billed as Sex Maniac, this amateur production was once considered one of the worst movies ever made, but with time and reevaluation has now reached the status of cult classic. That still doesn’t make it good, though. Director Dwain Esper worked with his wife Hildagarde Stadie to craft a cinematic fever dream about an insane doctor and his even more insane patient, who goes on a violent crime spree that includes kidnapping and raping a woman. The Poe connection comes in the form of a cat that happens to be black, but the title is merely a misdirect to cash in on the author’s fame.