Beyond the Cycle: More Gothic Horror (that may or may not involve Vincent Price, Edgar Allan Poe, or Roger Corman)

Last Halloween I did a series of blogs about the “Poe Cycle:” a series of Gothic Horror movies that Roger Corman made for American International Pictures, based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe, staring Vincent Price.  It was a whole lot of fun to do, and well before I’d even finished writing those things, I’d already decided I wanted to do a sort of sequel the following year.  It helps that, as I get older and crankier, my little “watch a lot of Vincent Price movies” tradition is pretty much the only thing connected to Halloween that I actually still like.  I don’t like bats or spiders, I don't like the combination of orange and purple, I don’t like most of the candy, I already have better excuses to dress up in costumes whenever I want, I don’t have any childhood nostalgia to try and relive through the holiday, and I’m REALLY sick of smug, self-satisfied hipsters using their anti-holiday to pretend that their Halloween decorations weren’t made in the same Chinese sweatshop as my Christmas decorations.  So yeah, I’m pretty firmly in the "don't like jack-o-lantern season" camp… and yet, I DO still love going back and re-watching these types of movies, and Halloween DOES provide me with an algorithm-friendly excuse to talk about them online.  And make no mistake, the fact that I covered all of the Poe Cycle last year does NOT mean I’m out of stuff to talk about.

You see, there are eight officially recognized movies in the Poe Cycle: House of Usher, The Pit and The Pendulum, The Premature Burial, Tales of Terror, The Raven, The Haunted Palace, Masque of the Red Death, and The Tomb of Ligeia.  The aren’t the only gothic horror movies Roger Corman ever made, they’re DEFINITELY not the only ones Vincent Price was in, and they’re far from the only Poe adaptations ever made.  It’s specifically the overlap of all these factors, plus being released by American International, that makes a movie part of the Cycle.  However, there are a LOT of lists out there that include more than just those eight films, even if they have an asterisk next to them.  You know, movies with SOME of the above factors, not quite all of them.  And the thing is, it’s actually not THAT much of a stretch to include honorary mentions, since even the “official” entries in the Poe Cycle don’t all make it to the center of that Venn diagram.  For example, due to the backstage weirdness of its production, The Premature Burial doesn’t have Vincent Price in it at all, and wasn’t even supposed to be for AIP in the first place.  And while The Haunted Palace CLAIMS to be based on a Poe poem, it’s ACTUALLY based on H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”  They don’t follow the rules, but we count them anyway because that’s just what you do.  It’s kind of like the English language.

The point being, there’s quite a few other movies floating around from this era that easily could be slipped into the list despite only meeting a few of the commonly accepted qualifications.  Like, say, a Poe adaptation released by AIP staring Price but without any involvement by Corman.  Or maybe a Gothic Horror from Corman using the cast and crew of a Poe adaptation, but not actually based on any of his works (that is, even less than usual).  Or a completely unrelated movie staring Vincent Price that AIP just happened to be distributing, so they re-named it to SOUND like a Poe adaptation.  Or, heck, just a period piece from AIP that shares the same look and feel of the Corman flicks enough that you can toss it in with them and nobody notices.  Look, I spent years watching Turner Classic Movies do marathons of the Poe Cycle, and randomly toss in stuff like 1962’s Tower of London because, hey, it’s got Vincent Price in period costumes wandering around a castle, so why not?  And darn it, if basic cable can get away with it, why not me?

So that’s what I’m going to do at this year.  Throughout The Spooky Month, I’ll be looking at a grab bag of Gothic Horror flicks at least partially connectable to Corman’s Poe Cycle, either via production history or distribution or simply the overall style and mood.  Or maybe I just got so used to seeing them in the aforementioned marathons that I automatically think of there being a connection even when there really isn't.  In other words, I felt like talking about them, and that's the most important qualification of them all!  So put on your fancy costumes, toss some cobwebs on the wall, and prepare for just SO many cases of premature burial, because we’re getting all Gothic Horror in here!