The Tomb of Ligeia / An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe
by Roger Corman, Kenneth Johnson
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Derek Francis, Elizabeth Shepherd, John Westbrook, Oliver Johnston, Vincent PriceDirector: Kenneth Johnson, Roger Corman
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 135 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-08-26
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of The Tomb of Ligeia / An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe
Movie Review: Prime Poe and Price
Summary: 4 Stars
This DVD represents the most and least elaborate of the American International Poe series, but also two of its very best efforts. "The Tomb of Ligeia," the last of the classic series (meaning the teaming of Vincent Price with director Roger Corman) is also the most unusual. Shot in England, it capitalizes on exterior locations rather than the series' usual claustrophobic soundstage settings. It also features Price at his most Byronic, made up and bewigged to look as young and dashing as possible, and he responds by keeping his character's madness well controlled. Sultry-voiced Elizabeth Shepherd plays two of Price's wives, one dead and one alive, with the latter being threatened by possession by the former. Abetted by cinematographer Arthur Grant, a Hammer Films regular, Director Corman established a dream-like atmosphere from the first scene (which is spoiled somewhat by a redundant bona fide dream sequence). The literate script by Robert Towne fuses in elements of other Poe stories, such as "The Black Cat" and even "The Fall of the House of Usher." But the overall influence here seems not so much Poe as Hitchcock. If "The Masque of the Red Death," the Poe film that directly preceeded "Ligeia," is something of an homage to Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," then this can be seen as Corman's take on "Vertigo." Even some of the individual shots, such as the one in which the alive Shepherd visits Price unnanounced, appearing to him as a vision stepping out of the light, are reminiscent of Hitchcock's masterpiece. Only the seemingly obligatory conflagration finale sends it straight back into typical Corman-land.
Also in this set is an hour-long television special called "An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe," which for years was something of a lost production, fondly remembered by those of us who first saw it in syndication, but seeming to exist nowhere on tape or disc. It features Vincent Price in solo recitations of four Poe tales -- "The Sphinx," "The Cask of Amantillado," "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Pit and the Pendulum." "The Sphinx" is one of Poe's rather whimsical short-short stories, and is treated by Price with the appropriate ironic humor, and "Amantillado" and "Heart" are good treatments of the stories. The real gem, though, is "Pendulum." In narrating the terrors of solitary confinement in complete darkness (this is the original Poe story, not the completely fabricated storyline of the 1961 film), Price works himself into such a state of intense terror that the result is electrifying. It may well be his best recorded performance, ever.
Summary of The Tomb of Ligeia / An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe
Tomb of Ligeia Evening with Edgar Allan PoeHorror DVD Video
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