Watch Tales of Terror For Free

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Long before Creepshow, Tales from the Crypt, or Treehouse of Horror this 1962 Roger Corman effort attempts the unholy trinity anthology style by giving us three Edgar Allen Poe stories adapted for the big screen. Though Corman was no stranger to taking a few meagre pages and expanding them to feature length with previous films such as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Fall of the House of Usher, he wisely keeps the running time to roughly 30 minutes each here.The first story is an adaptation of Morella with Vincent Price brooding in his gloomy castle, pining for his long-dead wife and the daughter who's birth killed her. It's good, with some nice sets and morbid ham acting from Price.The second story bills itself as an adaptation of The Black Cat but seems a bit more like The Telltale Heart. In it Peter Lorre is a drunk who bricks up his wife and her lover (Price again) in his cellar so he can spend her money on drink. The cat imagery doesn't seem like it even belongs in this story but Price's over-the-top acting makes this one more comedic.Lastly, we have an adaptation of The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, which is the weakest of the three. Here we have Basil Rathbone put Price under hypnosis at the moment of his death as a way of controlling his ghost for eternity. It's not very good and I was getting bored before the end.Overall, an okay movie but hardly the finest hour for anyone involved.

There have been plenty of movies based on Edgar Allan Poe stories. I mean, plenty. Countless versions of Buried Alive or The Masque of the Red Death, with some Pit and the Pendulum thrown in for good measure. 1962's Tales of Terror is another entry in the subgenre, only there are three stories, and one combines aspects of two Poe stories.The first one, Morella, is about an aged widower (Vincent Price, who appears in all three stories) who lives alone in an isolated family castle, grieving over his dead wife and blaming the daughter who killed her during childbirth. The now grown child Lenora (Maggie Pierce) shows up to visit her long-estranged dad. Unresolved death! But the deceased Morella has plans for her living husband and daughter.Next up is The Black Cat, which also includes elements from The Cask of Amontillado. Peter Lorre plays a loutish drunk named Montresor, married to the lovely and buxom Annabel (Joyce Jameson). Montresor wanders into a meeting of expert wine tasters, led by the gregarious Fortunato Luchresi (Price). Despite Montresor's slovenly, uncultured appearance, he's able to match Luchresi's knowledge of and capacity for wine, and the two become friends. Until Montresor discovers his new friend has been having an affair with Annabel, thus leading to our connection with The Cask of Amontillado. This segment is often pretty funny, particularly when Montresor hallucinates that his head has been lopped off and is being tossed around like a toy. Lorre was reportedly so scared of the head prop that he refused to even touch it.Finally, it's The Curious Case of M. Valdemar, in which Price plays a dying man who's beholden to an evil hypnotist played by Basil Rathbone. Rathbone's Carmichael is able to alleviate the constant pain endured by Price's Valdemar, but at a price - as Valdemar passes on, Carmichael will hypnotize him, the better to gain understanding as to what happens in the afterlife. Naturally, he uses this opportunity to take over Valdemar's body, marry his wife, and assume his fortune. Poor Carmichael.Director Roger Corman and Vincent Price, as usual, are a great team, and Tales of Terror is alternately spooky and funny. Great atmosphere, too; part of the Price/Corman cycle of Poe-related movies in the 1960s, some of the sets here were reused later in Comedy of Terrors.

When I was in 7th grade (many light years ago in a galaxy far, far away), the schools used to show movies on Saturday on 16mm in the cafeteria and they charged like 25 cents to get in. It was a cheap way to see a lot of different movies and this was one of them.We also saw things like "Earth v. The Flying Saucers" (one of Ray Harryhausen's wonderful magic tricks with stop motion animation), and Abbot & Costello Meet Dracula and Frankenstein series of movies. "Ch...Chh...Chip!!!" I guess my generation was a bit more naive than today's is because this one scared the pants off me (particularly the final segment which was taken from the Edgar Allen Poe tale; "The Strange Case of Msr. Valdemar").My parents had dropped me off at the movie and some of my friend's parents took me because my parents had gone out, so I was home all alone.Have you ever had a case of the crawling creepies? Between the experience of the movie and the 8 hours of being home alone, it burned this memory into my brain that won't ever go away, but the strange thing is that despite excellent acting, a great adaptation of Poe's short stories and great direction by the King of nickel horror films, Roger Corman, I never saw this film again until I tripped across a copy of it on DVD on Amazon.As I have often found with films that made a huge impression on me in my younger years, I expected to be disappointed but I was surprised to be caught up in the narrative and acting of all the people involved in the project. It's impossible to hate Peter Lorre, Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone and Roger Corman can definitely make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.This movie helped to launch a lifelong love of Edgar Allen Poe and other writers of horror bent fiction--but not the slasher flicks or needless and gratuitous sex and blood movies of today.If you want a quality piece of horror cinema then go see Dracula with Bela Lagosa, or Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, or even The Fly with Vincent Price.If you're not interested then this review won't mean much to you anyway so you can just breeze by to the next one and no hard feelings.

Overall, this entry in Roger Cormans' cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations isn't as successful as the best of them. It drags too much in places and therefore doesn't get a good enough momentum going. Still, it's good looking stuff, as always, and does serve as a showcase for a top notch horror film cast.As scripted by Richard Matheson, these aren't necessarily very faithful adaptations, but expand on the stories in generally entertaining ways. Each runs a little over or a little under a half hour long, resulting in a 90 minute long film of merrily macabre doings. The payoffs are great, and worth waiting for in each instance.Tale One: "Morella". Vincent Price (who also stars in the other segments) plays Locke, visited by his long estranged daughter Lenora (Maggie Pierce) who wants to make up for lost time. However, even in death Lockes' late wife Morella (Leona Gage) bears a powerful resentment that hangs over everything.Tale Two: "The Black Cat". Peter Lorre, in a priceless comic performance, stumbles and mutters his way through the role of Montresor Herringbone, a hopeless alcoholic who decides to do something about the fact that his mistreated wife Annabel (Joyce Jameson) has taken up with the debonair wine taster (Price) who has entered their lives.Tale Three: "The Case of M. Valdemar". Basil Rathbone is wonderfully evil as an unscrupulous hypnotist who takes advantage of a dying man (Price), leaving the mans' mind in limbo while his wife Helene (Debra Paget) and a concerned doctor (David Frankham) fret over the situation.All three segments contain some effective horror imagery, along with the to-be- expected bizarre nightmare sequences. "The Black Cat" is by far the most utterly comedic of the trio, with some absolutely hysterical reaction shots from Price to the drunken antics of Lorre. It's also the longest, but as said before, the payoff still makes it quite worthwhile. The colours are gorgeous, the special effects decent, and the music by Les Baxter is effective throughout.Fans of filmmaker Corman and the actors involved should be satisfied with "Tales of Terror". It doesn't carry the same weight as, say, "House of Usher" or "The Masque of the Red Death", but it's still pretty fun, and that's what really matters.