I enjoy the master of horror Vincent Price in movies like this one, along with Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. This is a cult classic that anyone who enjoys comedy mixed with a little terror will surely want to watch. This very early performance by Jack Nicholson is great to see. The picture quality of this DVD is very good.
They Put New Life In The Undertaking Business!
Richard Matheson, one of the most important talents in the horror field (his filmed novels include Hell House, The Shrinking Man and I Am Legend -- the latter done twice, as The Last Man On Earth and The Omega Man), scripts this two black comedies. In The Comedy of Terrors, Vincent Price is the scheming owner of a funeral home. He has taken over the business from doddering and deaf Boris Karloff, and, desperate for money, forces the unfortunate Peter Lorre to help him drum up business by killing prospective clients. Funny stuff as far as it goes, but The Raven is the real masterpiece here. Directed by Roger Corman, the film chronicles the battle between good (but wimpy) sorcerer Price and evil sorcerer Karloff. Caught up in the battle are Price's daughter and Lorre's son (played by none other than Jack Nicholson). Half the fun is watching the collision of acting styles: classically-trained Karloff, method actor Nicholson, improvisational madman Lorre, and mediator Price.
Both movies are accompanied by reminiscences by Richard Matheson, who also expounds on his storytelling philosophy in 9-minute featurettes. The theatrical trailers are present too. The Raven has a few more extras. Roger Corman shares his (fascinating) recollections in another featurette (too brief at 8 minutes). A very neat addition is the original promotional record for The Raven, accompanied by a still gallery. The menus are basic.
This is yet another terrific addition to the Midnite Movies line: two long-overdue widescreen releases from the golden age of American International Pictures. No commentaries, but the provided extras are good stuff, and any extra at all is a serious bonus when you're already getting two movies at a budget price.
What place is this ?
Comedy of Terrors is quite possibly the funniest "horror" movie on the planet. Well, with the exception of "Theatre of Blood". Fantastic entertainment. If you don't like this...you're already dead !
The Masque of the Red Death (1964) is Roger Corman's, and most people's, choice as the best of the Edgar Allan Poe pictures. Masque offers the expected creepy atmosphere and violence against peasants, plus metaphysical ponderings and pointed satanic cruelty. (Corman was operating as much under the influence of Ingmar Bergman as of Edgar Allan Poe.) Nicolas Roeg's color cinematography and Daniel Haller's elaborate production design would be stellar in any Hollywood A-movie; the mono-colored rooms of the prince's castle are a startling effect. Vincent Price is in fine fettle as Prince Prospero, the devil-worshipping sadist who throws lavish parties while the countryside is ravaged by the plague.
The Premature Burial (1962) substitutes Ray Milland in the usual Price... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vincent Price Director(s): Roger Corman DVD Release Date: Released the 27 August 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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"The Tomb of Ligeia" was the last of Roger Corman's eight Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, and he went all out. Instead of the usual cheap studio setting (although these were used for all the interior scenes), this movie had breathtaking photography of the English countryside, as well as a creepy graveyard. I consider "The Tomb of Ligeia" to be one of Corman's very best, if not his finest, Poe adaptation. It has wonderful performances from the entire cast, great cinematography, and haunting music composed and conducted by Kenneth V. Jones.
Vincent Price is Verdan Fell, a depressed man who's wife Ligeia has recently died and been buried. But at the funeral he remembers her final words: "Man need not kneel before the angels, nor lie in death forever save for the weakness of his... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Roger Corman DVD Release Date: Released the 26 August 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Made at the height of Roger Corman's successful Edgar Allan Poe series (with his perennial star Vincent Price), these two pictures, while similar in tone to the Poe films, adapt two different writers. Tower of London, a remake of the Basil Rathbone/Boris Karloff film from 1935, is a version of Shakespeare's Richard III, with Price taking on the role of the villainous hunchback, plotting and killing his way to the throne of England. The Haunted Palace, meanwhile, takes its title from a Poe poem, but in every other respect is an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Here Price comes to the creepy town of Arkham to claim his inheritance: the palace of the title. Once there, his mind is taken over by the vengeful spirit of his warlock ancestor, determined to continue... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Roger Corman DVD Release Date: Released the 26 August 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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House of Wax brought Vincent Price into the horror genre, where he fit as snugly as a scalpel in a mad scientist's hand. A remake of the 1933 film Mystery of the Wax Museum, this entertaining Gothic shocker casts Price as a sculptor of wax figures; his unwilling victims--er, "models"--lend their bodies to his lifelike depictions of Marie Antoinette and Joan of Arc. The film was one of the top 10 moneymakers of its year, thanks in part to the 3-D gimmick, which explains why so many things are aimed at the camera (why else would the paddleball man be there?). Footnote to history: director Andre De Toth was blind in one eye, and thus could not see in three dimensions.
Not at all a musty relic of the early-sound era, the original Mystery of the Wax Museum (shot in a... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vincent Price - Frank Lovejoy Director(s): André De Toth DVD Release Date: Released the 05 August 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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