ABCs of Horror 3: “T” Is for Tales of Terror (1962)

Paste’s ABCs of Horror 3 is a 26-day project that highlights some of our favorite horror films from each letter of the alphabet. The only criteria: The films chosen can’t have been used in our previous Century of Terror, a 100-day project to choose the best horror film of every year from 1920-2019, nor previous ABCs of Horror entries. With many heavy hitters out of the way, which movies will we choose?

At the dawn of the 1960s, a (relatively) fresh-faced Roger Corman had just wrapped up an incredibly prolific run as a producer-director, having personally directed a whopping 24 low-budget films in a bevy of genres (western, action, horror, sci-fi) in the five year period between 1955-1960. Typically shooting a feature in less than a week, at budgets well below $100,000, the man was a veritable filmmaking machine: A guaranteed money-making professional who could scrape together just enough footage to make a passable movie and finance the next movie in the process. But burning the candle at both ends that way wasn’t really something that anyone could sustain forever–the king of the B movie wanted to make bigger, lusher productions, something that would contain at least a bit more artistic expression. And the works of Edgar Allan Poe were waiting to make his dreams a reality.

Thus began Corman’s so-called “Poe cycle” at American International Pictures, a series of eight films made between 1960-1964, beginning with the big-budget (for Corman) showiness of the gothic classic House of Usher in 1960. All eight were directed by Corman, and all (except one, The Premature Burial) starred his personal Poe muse, Vincent Price, who had already gotten his feet wet in the horror genre with 1953’s House of Wax. The series contains some minor classics like 1964’s The Masque of the Red Death, and films that only I seem to love, like 1963’s covert H.P. Lovecraft adaptation The Haunted Palace. But the most unique would likely by 1962’s Tales of Terror, as the only horror anthology of the cycle. If you’re wondering, “Did they make it because they were running out of Poe stories and wanted to combine a few short stories into a feature?”, the answer would be “absolutely.” But that doesn’t make Tales of Terror any less charming, mostly thanks to Price. These films more than any others would be the basis of the actor’s horror typecasting for the rest of his career, to his potential chagrin.

Tales of Terror contains three stories, each of which centrally stars Price. “Morella” is classic gothic horror, a story about love and jealousy that lives on even after death, as a despairing man in a crumbling mansion–heavy House of Usher overtones–is haunted by the presence of his dead wife and reconnects with his living daughter, only to see the two potentially trade places on opposite sides of the veil between life and death. “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” is a bit of a snooze, the story of a dying man (Price) who is taken advantage of by a cruel hypnotist who attempts to steal away all he has left, mostly notable for the presence of storied Sherlock Holmes actor Basil Rathbone as its antagonist. The real main event? That would be middle story “The Black Cat,” which fuses several Poe tales together but mostly functions as a comedy horror reimagining of “The Cask of Amontillado,” with deeply charming results.

“The Black Cat” is the one segment in the film that finds the perfect performer to pair against the impish, mischievous energy that Vincent Price can bring to the screen, and that man is Peter Lorre as one “Montresor Herringbone.” The Montresor is a drunk, a stumbling boozehound who crashes a wine vintner’s gathering and proceeds to challenge the country’s foremost wine taster, Fortunato (Price) to a taste off. The audience of course assumes that Lorre’s addled Montresor is simply angling for some more free hooch, but he goes on to shock the assembled crowd (and the viewers at home) by demonstrating that although he may lack a certain genteel refinement, he does indeed know his wine. What follows is a very amusing battle of wits and palates between the two clashing personalities, pitting the foppish aristocracy of Fortunato against the more humble (but deeply drunk) antics of Montresor, with each of the two ultimately earning an oddly respectful view of the other. Uh, before Fortunato also begins sleeping with Montresor’s wife, that is. Well, he needed some reason to wall the guy up in his cellar, didn’t he?

This clash between two fools makes for at least one strong highlight in Tales of Terror, but in truth this is a fairly lightweight adaptation of the works of Poe, lacking the more expansive and grand stylings that Corman would bring to feature length stories like House of Usher and Masque of the Red Death. The reason to watch it today is the charm of its performances–Price and Lorre, and to a lesser extent Rathbone, working as a triumvirate of seasoned horror actors now embracing their campier side. Indeed, this would largely be the direction of Corman’s Poe films moving forward, as the comedic aspects of “The Black Cat” feel like a launching point for 1963’s The Raven, another full-on horror farce that would reunite Price and Lorre, now joined by Boris Karloff in a story of dueling sorcerers. Corman, meanwhile, would wrap up the series in 1964 and increasingly spend more time producing rather than personally directing his own features in the decades that followed.

For a few years there in the early 1960s, though, you could barely step into a drive-in without finding an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation bearing his name.

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more film writing.