The Tomb of Ligeia **** (1964, Vincent Price, Elizabeth Shepherd, Oliver Johnston) – Classic Movie Review 2843

Shot in England and released in 1964, the final film in director Roger Corman’s cycle of eight Edgar Allan Poe-inspired movies (begun with House of Usher in 1960) is a creepily dark and superbly atmospheric gothic affair. Supposedly based on Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe, it is written by Robert Towne, who most famously penned Chinatown, for which he won the 1975 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Vincent Price is on magisterial form as Verden Fell, a grieving Victorian widower haunted by an obsession with his dead wife, the Lady Ligeia  (Elizabeth Shepherd), who turns into a cat, and drives a wedge between him and his second bride, the Lady Rowena Trevanion (also Shepherd). The couple live reclusively in a small part of a half-ruined abbey with the manservant Kenrick (Oliver Johnston).

Price gives a most sombre turn and looks at his most gravely impressive in his black clothes, top hat and dark glasses, symbolically emphasising his emotional darkness and blindness.

[Spoiler alert] There’s a rousing, though somewhat conventional, Corman horror climax that leads, once again in one of his movies, to the hero being engulfed by fire.

Arthur Grant’s cinematography is a major asset, filming largely on location in a 12th-century ruined Norfolk abbey, though the interiors were shot at Shepperton Studios.

Corman said: ‘[Robert] Towne wrote the film as a love story and that’s how we wanted it. This was the first Poe movie to be filmed on natural locations. For the first time we brought the world of Poe into the world of reality.’

Also in the cast are John Westbrook, Derek Francis, Richard Vernon, Ronald Adam, Frank Thornton, Denis Gilmore and Penelope Lee.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2843

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