Derek Winnert

The Oblong Box *** (1969, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Alister Williamson, Hilary Dwyer, Peter Arne, Sally Geeson, Rupert Davies, Michael Balfour, Maxwell Shaw, Harry Baird) – Classic Movie Review 2832

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Vincent Price and Christopher Lee star together for the first time in American International Pictures’ tasty, effective 1969 gothic shocker officially based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Premature Burial, but also combining ideas taken from the Burke and Hare, Jack the Ripper and Phantom of the Opera stories.

Price plays guilt-ridden Julian Markham, a 1865 Victorian aristocrat who incarcerates his brother Sir Edward (Alister Williamson), disfigured in an African voodoo ceremony, locked in his room in a tower of his house. Sir Edward plots to escape by faking his own death, drugged in a deathlike trance.

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Julian finds his ‘dead’ brother, puts him in a coffin (the oblong box) and has Sir Edward buried alive. Julian then marries his young fiancée, Elizabeth (Hilary Dwyer).

Sir Edward is dug up by grave-robbers and delivered to Dr Neuhartt (Lee), who opens the coffin to cut him up but is confronted by the resurrected Sir Edward. He blackmails Neuhartt into sheltering him, conceals his face behind a crimson hood and embarks on a killing vengeance spree.

Producer Gordon Hessler assumed the director’s chair when Michael Reeves died suddenly during pre-production and made a number of substantial changes to Lawrence Huntington’s original screenplay. And when Huntington also died just as shooting began, Christopher Wicking was called in for more substantial re-writing. They re-worked the script to incorporate the theme of imperial exploitation of native peoples in Africa, which led to the film being banned in Texas.

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Hessler assembles all the gruesome horrors in fine style, Huntington’s and Wicking’s screenplay is busy and involving, the acting is suitably ripe and juicy and John Coquillon’s cinematography is stylish.

Also in the cast are Peter Arne, Rupert Davies, Michael Balfour, Maxwell Shaw, Harry Baird, Carl Rigg, Geoffrey James, Sally Geeson, Ivor Dean, Colin Jeavons and Martin Wyldeck.

Character actor Alister Williamson has most screen time, but his voice was dubbed by another actor and his face is covered for most of the film with makeup done by Jimmy Evans.

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The film was successful and ushered in a series of follow-up AIP horror movies, including Scream and Scream Again and Cry of the Banshee.

Price, Davies and Dwyer had recently appeared in Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder General. The original script had the Markham brothers as twins, both played by Price.

It had to wait till 1970 Price and Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to star together – in Scream and Scream Again – and then it was for the one and only time.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2832

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

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