The Haunted Palace (1963)

Directed by: Roger Corman

It's a true sign of exploitation film making when the title of a movie has nothing at all to do with the movie itself, but was used only to tag along on a successful movie series (the Corman Poe adaptions). When it comes to this movie it was the film company who went over Corman's head and used a Poe title just so they could sell it as one of his Poe movies. Because a Poe movie it definitely ain't... Even though the title "The Haunted Palace" comes from an Poe poem (and a small part of it is added to the very last seconds of the movie to justify the title), this is a Lovecraft adaption and nothing else. This is Roger Corman's version of "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" and I gotta say that I wish he would have done more Lovecraft stories as this one is among the better of his movies. If you ask me, that is... (not that you did, but this is my blog so I'm telling ya! ;-)).

It's not the first time a movie is "based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe" without having anything to do with the story itself. The old Lugosi/Karloff movies "The Raven" and "The Black Cat" comes to mind... Great movies both of them, but there was really no need to use Poe's name on any of them.


Anyway, the movie starts in 1765 with the dastardly Joseph Curwen (played by Vincent Price) doing all he can to mate the women of Arkham with a monster he has in his cellar. This is probably a monster straight out of the Cthulhu mythos, but I can't say which one it is... looks like a green turd with four arms. The town people are suspicious of his doings and go to his place to kick his butt for being a warlock. Things go out of hand and Curwen is tied to a tree and burned like the man-witch he is... but before turning to ashes he curses the town (like any good old warlock/witch does just before dying in the flames) and promises to rise from the dead and torment the people of Arkham once again. Thems fighting words!


We then jump 110 years into the future (to 1875) and the Wards come to town. Charles Dexter (again played by Vincent Price) and his beautiful wife Anne (Debra Paget) have come to claim the "palace" he has inherited from his ancestor Joseph Curwen. Not only does Charles look exactly like his ancestor, so does all of the town people (a cheap way to save some bucks on actors). It doesn't take long though for Charles to start to act weird at their new home... all thanks to the spiffy painting of Curwen that hangs above the fire place. And soon Curwen is crawling his way back into the body of Charles Dexter Ward to act out his revenge on the town that burned him all those years ago. Some people do hold a grudge...

Even though this is not a real Poe movie, it's still part of those films (the others are: "House of Usher", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "Tales of Terror", "The Raven", The Masque of the Red Death", "The Tomb of Ligeia" and "The Premature Burial" (the only one of these movies that didn't star Vincent Price)) and this is my favorite of the lot. Vincent Price is as good as ever and here you get to see him both as the regular (and a little weak) Charles Dexter Ward and the evil Joseph Curwen and he shines in both parts. We also get to see good old Lon Chaney Jr doing a good job as the kind caretaker of the palace (which might be older than he looks, and maybe not as kind as he first appears).

Corman was the master of gothic horror in the 60's and here you get it all... foggy dark streets, sinister looking mutants, cheap painted back drops (that does add to the fairytale look of it all), warlocks raising the dead, a monster in the cellar, revenge from beyond the grave, the Necronomicon, and the mere mention of Cthulhu and Yog Sothoth is enough for me... Again, I really wish that Corman would have delved deeper into the world of Lovecraft and made some more adaptions as, even though this one isn't extremely faithful to the original text, I place this one up there together with "Re-Animator" and "From Beyond" as the best of the Lovecraft movies.