Review of Tales of Terror

Three very well done Poe tales and the each have their own charm. The only thing that keeps me from giving this a 5/5 is the last tale is a little slow and doesn't offer much but Debra Paget is hot! I'll give a short summary of each tale:

Morella is the story of a young girl gone to revisit her father after never seeing him for over 26 years, since her birth. Morella dies at a party and blames the death on her new born baby. Mr. Locke, played by Vincent Price, isn't to pleased seeing her daughter but they try to make amends, however, Morella has a different plan and seeks her revenge on her daughter. The thing I don't get about this story is Morella kills her husband as well, why? There's a funny part where Lenora admits she's pretty much a slut after saying; "I've failed in my relationships with men many times, many times." Haha, I love it. I also love the transparent ghost effect. It's very creepy and still very effective by todays standards.

The Black Cat is an odd story of a man who hates a cat and loves to drink himself to the point of passing out each night. Fortunato assists him home one night and he meets the drunkards wife and soon an affair insues. Montresor finds out, tombs them up behind a wall but doesn't realize he tombed up the cat too. This leads to his downfall. I personally love this story so much because Peter Lorre plays such an awesome drunk and the dialogue comedy is great as well. "Could you spare a coin for a moral cripple?" LOL. The cats roaring meow at the end rules too!

The 3rd tale of Valdemar is my least favourite. Mr. Valdemar is dying and he is using an experimental sleep technique to help make him feel no pain when he dies. This doesn't go as planned as his body is dead but his mind is still aware and now under the control of Mr. Carmichael, played by Basil Rathbone. He orders Valdemar to let him marry his wife but she doesn't like the idea and stuggles with him. This pisses the now zombie state of Valdemar and comes after Carmichael and kills him...oozing puss and all. The story is slow but the zombie corpse is awesome and pretty gross looking, even by Roger Corman standards. If I was a kid I'd have nightmares from it.