Tales of Terror (1962) – Review

Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror is the cinematic equivalent of a gothic wine flight: three mini-doses of Edgar Allan Poe, poured into one luridly lit glass, swirled with gallows humour, and gulped down with Vincent Price’s velvety voice as the chaser. Released in 1962 at the height of Corman’s “Poe cycle,” it’s both spooky and silly, lavish and lurid, a film that’s as comfortable with melodrama as it is with morbid laughter. What results is a trio of macabre vignettes that manage to be creepy, campy, and unmistakably Corman-esque.

The film presents three short sequences adapted from Poe’s stories — “Morella,” “The Black Cat” (mashed together with “The Cask of Amontillado”), and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” Each is introduced by Vincent Price, whose honeyed narration sets the mood somewhere between bedtime story and funeral sermon. While the tales differ in tone — tragic, comedic, and horrifying in turn — they share a preoccupation with death, decay, and the foolishness of mankind, all served with a side of cobwebs and candlelight.

Morella

Lenora (Maggie Pierce), an unfortunate young woman who looks like she’s walked straight out of a soap commercial and into a haunted house, visits her estranged father (Vincent Price) in his gloomy estate. He’s drunk, dishevelled, and deeply resentful — blaming her for the death of his beloved wife, Morella (Leona Gage), who inconveniently died giving birth to her. Unfortunately, Morella’s body is still hanging around, literally decomposing upstairs like a houseguest who never left. Lenora wants to reconcile with her bitter father, but things get awkward when her terminal illness is revealed, and Morella’s restless spirit decides to even the score by swapping corpses. Soon, it’s body-swap mayhem, ghostly strangulation, and a fire that burns down the house — because in a Roger Corman movie, no family reunion ends without arson.

The Black Cat

Montresor Herringbone (Peter Lorre) is a slovenly drunk with a talent for self-pity and a hatred for both his wife Annabelle (Joyce Jameson) and her feline companion. One night, he stumbles into a wine-tasting event and challenges the debonair Fortunato Luchresi (Vincent Price) to a contest of oenophilic superiority. What begins as a drunken duel of the palates turns into a comic bromance between Lorre and Price, complete with priceless facial expressions and some truly heroic sipping. But when Montresor discovers that his new drinking buddy is now his wife’s lover, he gets revenge the only way Poe knows how: by bricking them up alive. Sadly, for him, the black cat has other plans — meowing his way into the evidence piles and ensuring Montresor’s downfall. It’s the only Poe story that doubles as a buddy comedy and a feline revenge tale.

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

In this final segment, the tone turns deadly serious — and delightfully grotesque. The dying M. Valdemar (Vincent Price, looking like death warmed over and then re-frozen) seeks relief from agony through hypnosis by the ever-creepy Mr. Carmichael (Basil Rathbone). Unfortunately, Carmichael keeps Valdemar trapped between life and death like a spiritual insurance scam. As weeks pass, the hypnotized corpse begins to rot but still talks, begging to be released. When Carmichael tries to force himself on Valdemar’s widow (Debra Paget), the corpse decides enough is enough — rising from the bed in a ghastly, dripping fury to enact supernatural vengeance. It’s Poe at his gloomiest, and Price’s putrescent zombie finale is pure, gooey gold.

A truly messy end.

Stray Observations:

• The “Black Cat” segment alone justifies the film’s existence — Peter Lorre and Vincent Price are the gothic Abbott and Costello we never knew we needed.
• The wine-tasting montage between Lorre and Price in “The Black Cat” might be one of the funniest sequences Corman ever shot — it’s less Poe and more Sideways with corpses.
• The smoke budget alone could have funded another movie. Every hallway looks like it’s on the verge of spontaneous combustion.
• The “Morella” house decor is peak early-’60s haunted chic: one part cobweb, two parts rot, and a generous helping of Victorian guilt.
• The ending of “Morella” is the house burning down, which is how about 80% of these Roger Corman horror films end.
• When Rathbone’s Carmichael hypnotizes Valdemar, it’s unclear whether he wants to help him or date him — the ambiguity is deliciously unsettling.
• Vincent Price doesn’t just star in all three segments—he dies in all three, too. It’s like a morbid game of Whac-A-Mole where every time he pops up, fate (or Roger Corman) gleefully smacks him back down.

It’s not easy being in a Roger Corman/Poe film.

Roger Corman’s direction in Tales of Terror strikes a perfect balance between gothic grandeur and B-movie efficiency. Working within modest budgets, Corman once again conjures opulent decay out of coloured gels, fog machines, and recycled sets from The Pit and the Pendulum. His pacing is brisk, but never rushed, allowing each story its own rhythm — tragic lament, black comedy, and existential nightmare. The use of the widescreen Panavision frame enhances the claustrophobia: every wall feels like it’s pressing inward, every flicker of candlelight like the last breath before doom. Corman, often accused of churning out quickies, proves here that he can blend atmosphere and irony better than most prestige directors of his era.

He adds a bit of ghoulish flair to his Poe outings.

Cinematographer Floyd Crosby, a frequent Corman collaborator, turns the film into a visual feast of colour and shadow. His use of deep reds and violet hues gives each sequence a painterly, otherworldly quality — like Poe’s stories being told through stained glass. Morella glows with ghostly blues and deathly whites, The Black Cat pops with garish pub lighting and drunken gold tones, and Valdemar sinks into putrid greens and corpse-gray shadows. Crosby’s work is so rich that it almost distracts you from the papier-mâché sets — almost.

Crosby knows his way around coloured gels. 

Screenwriter Richard Matheson, already known for I Am Legend and The Twilight Zone, adapts Poe’s tales with a deft mix of faithfulness and flair. He doesn’t just transcribe the stories — he modernizes their rhythm, injects humour where needed, and gives the characters sharper, more relatable neuroses. The Black Cat especially benefits from Matheson’s wit, transforming grim horror into near-farcical domestic tragedy. He even manages to make the metaphysical horror of Valdemar intelligible, which is no small feat when your main character spends half the runtime dead but talking.

You can’t silence Vincent Price.

And then there’s the cast — a veritable horror all-star lineup. Vincent Price, of course, is the beating heart (and sometimes rotting corpse) of the film, alternating between tragic romantic, comic drunk, and doomed victim with effortless charisma. Basil Rathbone’s icy presence in Valdemar is chilling; he plays Carmichael like Sherlock Holmes’s evil twin who minored in necromancy. Together, these actors elevate Tales of Terror from pulp anthology to something approaching high art — if your definition of high art includes ghost moms and talking corpses. Peter Lorre, deliciously unkempt, gives The Black Cat a loopy vitality — his slurred one-liners are pure magic.

“Pardon me, ladies, but could you spare a coin for a moral cripple?”

In conclusion, Tales of Terror is one of the crown jewels of Corman’s Poe series — an elegant, eccentric, and oddly charming blend of high Gothic horror and low-budget ingenuity. It’s a film where laughter and dread share the same coffin, where Price’s sardonic grin meets Rathbone’s villainous glare under Floyd Crosby’s dreamlike lighting. Whether you come for the chills, the chuckles, or the sheer theatricality of watching three horror legends relish every line of purple prose, Tales of Terror remains a masterclass in how to do anthology horror right. Like a good bottle of Amontillado, it only gets better with age — assuming you don’t get bricked up before finishing it.