An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe, a review by Antares
An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (1972)
62/100 - Edgar Allan Poe was the first author that I fell in love with when I was young. The brevity of his stories, along with their macabre nature and rich imagery, easily cemented Poe's genius in my mind. To that end, like almost anything one reads, you have a preconceived notion of how the characters look and sound in your mind. Unfortunately for me, these notions were at odds with the performances of Vincent Price in four of Poe's short stories. The film clocked in at a meager 53 minutes, but felt like two hours. I love Vincent Price, and I could understand AIP's reason for having him do these one man recitations. The man's a legend of the Gothic horror genre and one would think that this would be a marriage made in heaven. But it's only 25% successful.
The Tell-Tale Heart - This is where my preconceived imagery was most glaringly at odds with Price's performance. I always saw the narrator of the tale as being coldly aloof and calculating in his manner, kind of like Hannibal Lecter. But Price plays him as if he's raging mad and his performance in this segment is overly melodramatic and it ruins the suspense of the matter of the old man's murder.
The Sphinx - Considered a lesser work from Poe, this was probably included to add a bit of whimsy to the four segment structure of stories. It's pretty light fare, but Price plays this one quite well. But that's to be expected as Price always had the knack for devilish type humor in his many portrayals.
The Cask of Amontillado - This was a short story that I never truly cared for when I first read it. But it turned out to be my favorite of the four segments as Price plays this one without the histrionics of the first and last stories in the film. What I found most interesting was the way that the director used alternating, quick edits of both of Price's facial profiles to render the conversation of the two men in the catacombs, a nice touch.
The Pit and the Pendulum - Once again, to augment the mood of dread inherent in the protagonist's plight, Price ratchets his bombast to a delirious and overwrought dimension in this final segment. I probably could have dealt with it better if he hadn't done it in the first segment also, but by now, it just came across as noisy and disengaging.
What the color coding means...
Teal = Masterpiece
Dark Green = Classic or someday will be
Lime Green = A good, entertaining film
Orange = Average
Red = Cinemuck
Brown = The color of crap, which this film is(From Antares' Short Summations on October 13th, 2012)
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May 02, 2024, 07:37:23 PM
