Beyond the Cycle: 1. The Oblong Box (1969)

1969’s The Oblong Box is one of the two movies most likely to be grafted onto somebody's “official” Poe Cycle list (though don’t expect me to talk about the other o gets tacked onto the Poe Cycle list is thanks to having Vincent Price in the lead… except he’s really NOT the lead.  Oh, the first act certainly makes it LOOK like he is.  We are introduced to Edward though Julian’s dealing with him, the co-conspirators in Edward’s escape plan are introduced via interactions with him as well, and we even get the classic “tortured guy struggles to keep his engagement together” plot of so many Poe adaptations, all about Julian.  But then, as soon as Edward gets dug out of that coffin, he slaps on a bad luchador mask to go about his revenging, and suddenly THIS is our main character.  Julian is abruptly downgraded to supporting character, and the severe lack of Price only makes proceedings even harder to sit through.  And the saddest thing is, for the most part, Price is in fine form here.  I see a lot of people remark that Price seems to be cutting back on the ham more than usual here, and while his performance is still a lot bigger than what most of the cast is up too, I do agree that this is a lot more naturalistic than I’m used to seeing in this kind of movie.  I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing (it fits the blander tone of the movie, but that tone could probably do with being challenged), but it DOES make for handy proof that Vincent Price really could do normal person acting when he felt like it.  Honestly, the only real problem I have with Price outside of his extended absences is how noticeably older he is than love interest Hilary Dwyer.  Seriously, the woman would play his DAUGHTER in a movie made AFTER this one.

But seriously, just about the only thing the film version of The Oblong Box shares in common with the short story of the same name is that name and the fact that coffins exist.  Poe’s Oblong Box is about a guy who turns out to be dragging is wife’s corpse around in the titular box.  The movie, on the other hand, is a MUCH lengthier and more convoluted trip through Poe’s familiar Gothic Horror tricks and even more tropes that he hadn’t even heard of yet.  Case in point: I might be forgetting something here, but I’m pretty sure Edgar Allen Poe never wrote any stories about African voodoo.  Yup, THIS Oblong Box tells the tale of a pair of brothers who own a plantation in Africa, one of whom was cursed by the natives.  And then a rather maddening web of witch doctor potions and fake deaths and grave robbing and general confusion masquerading as ominous mystery ensues.  Yeah, this is one of those movies with aspirations of being a series of shocking twists and betrayals and devious plots crashing into each other, except they never actually add up to anything.  Oh sure, it cuts back and forth from scene to scene fast enough that one can easily be tricked into THINKING it’s all headed somewhere, but that’s the kind of trick a movie can only pull off for so long before I start to stop and ask “So, wait, WHY did all that happen?”  And make no mistake, there’s plenty of great Horror movies out there where questions like that are totally beside the point.  I’ll gladly roll with complete absurdity from a movie that gives me something else to focus on, like eye-catching style or entertaining performances or pervasive atmosphere or any of those other classic excuses.  But here… I’d tried to sit through all of The Oblong Box multiple times before and could never manage it.  Even now, I’m having to take breaks to write up chunks of this blog while the movie is paused.  And no, it's not out of any desire to save time or get fresh reactions or anything, I just need to wander away and vent, because the movie’s simply not doing it for me.

First off, let’s get one thing out of the way, something that most reviewers desperately want us to think is a bigger part of the movie than the movie itself manages to pull off: the racial/political angle.  Obviously, a story about some rich white guys owning a plantation in Africa is going to have some unavoidable implications… which makes it all the more astounding how tacked on and superficial the moments of addressing those implications actually are.  And I’m not just talking about the fact that this “commentary” boils down to Vincent Price having two or three “Eh, maybe this whole Imperialism thing kinda sucks” lines that could be cut from the film with no impact whatsoever.  That’s pretty much what happens when ANY movie tries to pretend it has a point.  No, the problem is that just about the only time we ever see the Africans the movie pretends to feel bad about, it’s as scary threats using their dark magic to lash out when provoked.  (And spoilers: they can’t even manage to lash out at the right provocateur)  When the literal opening shots of the movie are an extended voodoo ritual deliberately shot to make the participants look as off-putting and freaky as possible (though the effectiveness of that is something I’ll get into in a moment), it’s hard not to greet those tacked on attempts at enlightenment with a hearty groan of “Dude, just… don’t.”  And even setting that aside, The Oblong Box is one of those movies where EVERYONE is some level of sleazy and corrupt, and that’s not the kind of movie that gets to do any moral grandstanding and get away with it.

Then again, maybe director Gordon Kessler and writer Christopher Wicking tried to graft on the strained attempts at commentary just out of a desperate need to have The Oblong Box be about SOMETHING.  Lord knows, it’s not got much of anything else going for it.  Even compared to the worst of the Corman Poe movies, The Oblong Box is fatally bereft of any mood or style.  Yes, there’s the occasional nice shot of authentic English countryside to be had, but just as often the on-location shots are marred by drab lighting or truly abysmal day for night effects.  Even in the scenes shot on set, the movie has the gray, colorless vibe of some depressing Charles Dickens piece, not the paradoxically decaying yet vibrant look that Corman’s movies excelled at.  The lack of visual flair only gets weirder as the film rolls on, and the movie becomes less of a Gothic Horror and more of a period piece Giallo, only without any of the eye-popping style of Mario Bava or Dario Argento… filmmakers who were heavily influenced by the look and feel of Corman’s Poe films, ironically.

And that’s another thing, right there.  While The Oblong Box starts out staunchly Gothic territory, with crazy people locked away in upper rooms and main characters getting buried alive and so forth, by the mid-point it’s transitioned over to a proto-slasher, and not a very good one.  Anybody who read my first set of blogs last year may remember that one of my MANY complaints about The Premature Burial was that it only gets interesting at the very end, after Guy’s gone crazy and goes looking for revenge.  I proposed that the movie might have been more interesting if those last few minutes had been what the whole movie was about… and now I may have to retract that statement.  That’s more or less where The Oblong Box goes in its second half, and it turns out an Edgar Allan Poe slasher kinda sucks.  At least, it does the way Gordon Kessler does it.  A big part of the problem is the lead, who is NOT Vincent Price, by the way.  That’s a whole problem unto itself, but we’ll get to that in a second.  No, central figure of the movie from the midpoint on is one Edward Markham, brother of Price’s Julian Markham, who’s been locked up since those pesky Africans disfigured him and drove him insane.  The whole “buried alive” thing is part of a truly bizarre escape attempt that makes less and less sense the more one thinks about it, and Edward spends the rest of the movie looking for revenge against, like, everybody.  You need to understand that, despite us being TOLD that Edward has been disfigured, we never actually see this for ourselves until the climax, with the rest of the film keeping his face off-screen or hidden behind a particularly lame red mask.  This facilitates a very ill-advised composite performance where Edward is portrayed physically by Alister Williamson, but his dialog is dubbed over by some rando whose name I can’t seem to find anywhere.  That may be just as well, because whoever it is really sucks.   Edward sounds like a bland, stuffy aristocrat, not a character who’s so paranoid and unstable that he lashes to murder at a moment’s notice.  In fact, there’s a lot of painful ADR in The Oblong Box, but Edward is the only character who relies on it entirely, and for such a central character, it’s a fatal strike against the movie for him to be utterly boring every time he opens his mouth.

The again, it’s also a nice microcosm of the whole second half of the movie.  Remember what I said about everybody in The Oblong Box being sleazy and corrupt?  Well, the movie sure doesn’t, instead spending long stretches being tasteful and well-mannered in exactly the sort of way that a movie about a guy in a mask stabbing prostitutes and grave robbers really shouldn’t be.  Even when the movie tries to over-compensate, such as a TORTUOUSLY over-long scene of drunken debauchery at a shady whorehouse, it’s just tedious and uncomfortable.  And if you think a good Gothic Horror story probably doesn’t need a sleazy edge to it in the first place, I actually agree.  But that’s the corner The Oblong Box paints itself into, and I’m gonna hold it accountable if it can’t deliver on what it commits itself to.  Oh, and all that stabbing is pretty pathetic too, amounting to little more than a little prop knife that (badly) squirts fake blood to be gently rubbed across the victims necks.  I’m pretty sure I could run down to Spirit Halloween and produce some better gore effects.

And uniting The Oblong Box’s failures at being a Gothic Horror AND a Slasher is it’s general failure at being a well-made movie.  I’ve already mentioned that there’s a fatal lack of atmosphere throughout, but what I haven’t mentioned yet are the VERY ill-advised POV shots littered throughout.  That’s one of the attempts to work around showing Edward’s face until the end of the movie, but it never manages to look anything other than goofy, especially thanks to some embarrassing use of fish eye lens.  It’s particularly bad in that lamentable opening scene where the African witch doctor curses Edward.  I’ve seen other reviews draw connections between these shots and a Busta Rhymes music video, and that is absolutely NOT the kind of comparison your Gothic Horror wants to inspire right out of the gate.  It also doesn’t help that, despite all the terrible lighting to come in later scenes, THIS sequence is completely bright and well-lit, giving us an unflatteringly clear look at how silly everything is.  Oh, and the ending is a total mess as well, looking to all the world like a movie that didn’t finish filming and had to be cut together in the editing room.  I’m pretty sure that’s not what happened, or at least I’ve not seen any mention of such problems, but it’s sure what the ugly editing looks like.  And speaking of looking ugly, the eventual reveal of Edward’s post-voodoo face is a HUGE letdown.  

Ahh, but if we’re talking about letdowns, then I must unfortunately address the issue of the biggest names of the poster.  Obviously, half the reason The Oblong Box gets tacked onto the Poe Cycle list is thanks to having Vincent Price in the lead… except he’s really NOT the lead.  Oh, the first act certainly makes it LOOK like he is.  We are introduced to Edward though Julian’s dealing with him, the coconspirators in Edward’s escape plan are introduced via interactions with him as well, and we even get the classic “tortured guy struggles to keep his engagement together” plot of so many Poe adaptations, all about Julian.  But then, as soon as Edward gets dug out of that coffin and slaps on a bad luchador mask to go about his revenging, suddenly THIS guy is our new main character.  Julian is abruptly downgraded to a supporting role, and the severe lack of Price only makes proceedings even harder to sit through.  And the saddest thing is, for the most part, Price is in fine form here.  I see a lot of people remark that Price seems to be cutting back on the ham more than usual here, and while his performance is still a lot bigger than what the rest of the cast is up too, I do agree that this is way more naturalistic than I’m used to seeing in this kind of movie.  I’m not sure if that's is a good or bad thing; it does fit the blander tone of the movie, but the movie could probably benefit with that tone being challenged more often. Still, it DOES make for handy proof that Vincent Price really could do normal person acting when he felt like it.  Honestly, the only real problem I have with Price outside of his extended absences is how noticeably older he is than love interest Hilary Dwyer.  Seriously, the woman would play his DAUGHTER in a movie made AFTER this one, so the pairing here is just distracting.

But the true disappointment comes from a different big name entirely: Christopher Lee.  Not that he’s BAD here or anything, the movie just gives him nothing to do.  I mean, Christopher Lee is playing a grave-robbing surgeon who stumbles onto a guy with a voodoo curse who wants to going on a murder spree.  That has all sorts of ghoulish potential, but such would apparently be beyond the imagination than the crew behind The Oblong Box.  Instead, the character of Dr. Neuhartt is just another generic British dude in a movie stuffed to bursting with generic British dudes who fail to make any meaningful impact.  Even worse, he barely even crosses paths with Price!  This movie is historic, the first time Christopher Lee and Vincent Price were in the same movie, but nearly all of their screen time is separate from each other.  They literally only meet AFTER Lee’s already been stabbed, and he’s dead about thirty seconds after that.  I think they manage to say about five words in each other's company.  What a waste.

And that’s The Oblong Box in general, a big waste.  Really encouraging way to start off a new series of blogs, huh?  Well, don’t worry.  For the next installment, we’ll hop back a few years and visit a movie that I actually DO like…