What happens when you mix Edgar Allan Poe, African voodoo, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and a British moral panic about imperial guilt? You get The Oblong Box, a gothic fever dream that starts in a coffin and ends in colonial karma. Directed by Gordon Hessler with enough fog and guilt to fill a Hammer vault, this is a movie where everyone either fakes their death, digs someone up, or just wishes they’d stayed in bed.
In 1865 England, Sir Edward Markham (Alister Williamson) is having the worst case of bad skin in Gothic cinema history. Disfigured in an African voodoo ritual after his brother’s questionable conduct abroad, he’s been locked away in the attic like a Victorian family secret. His brother Julian (Vincent Price), wracked with guilt but also apparently fine with imprisoning a relative, keeps him under wraps until Sir Edward decides enough is enough. With help from shady lawyer Samuel Trench (Peter Arne) and the conveniently available witch doctor N’Galo (Harry Baird), Edward fakes his own death using a potion that simulates the afterlife, or at least a really long nap.
“Have you, by chance, read Poe’s Premature Burial?”
Unfortunately, Julian is not the kind of man who handles family crises with grace. He finds his “dead” brother and, too embarrassed by the whole facial-melting situation, decides to substitute another corpse for Edward’s wake. Trench and N’Galo oblige by murdering a nearby landlord (because why not?), dumping the body in a river, and letting Julian bury his not-so-dead sibling alive. Once that’s all settled, Julian celebrates by marrying his young fiancée, Elizabeth (Hilary Dwyer), proving that nothing says romance like family homicide.
The horror of May-December romances.
Things go awry (as they do when you bury people who aren’t dead). Grave robbers dig up Sir Edward and deliver him—still very much breathing—to the morally flexible Dr. J. Neuhartt (Christopher Lee). Edward wakes up, blackmails the doctor, and covers his Freddy Krueger face with a crimson hood, which somehow makes him even creepier. Now convinced he’s been betrayed, he embarks on a killing spree to find the witch doctor, pausing only for a brief love affair with Neuhartt’s maid Heidi (Uta Levka). Naturally, the relationship doesn’t work out, and the maid ends up changing employers just before her homicidal ex starts turning the countryside into a murder buffet. Including an unwanted stop with a prostitute.
“Do you know a Jack the Ripper?”
Julian eventually catches wind that the wrong man was buried, the right man is killing everyone, and the whole situation’s about to implode. Sir Edward tracks down N’Galo, hoping for a cure, but instead learns the ugly truth: Julian—not Edward—committed the crime that led to Edward’s punishment. Voodoo justice, as it turns out, is efficient but not always accurate. After a brutal fight, Edward kills N’Galo, then returns to confront Julian. Cue gunfire, sibling accusations, and the big hood reveal. Edward gets both barrels, but not before biting his brother like a gothic vampire with a taste for irony. The curse passes on, and in the final twist, Julian’s face begins to melt just like Edward’s.
Somewhere, Poe is smiling—probably while rolling in his grave.
Stray Observations:
• Christopher Lee is given a “Guest Starring” credit, but as this is a movie, and not a TV show, that doesn’t make much sense. It’s not as if this were the pilot for a new show.
• Edward’s “death” plan involves so many unnecessary steps, including hiring both a lawyer and a witch doctor. A simple note saying “don’t bury me” would’ve done wonders.
• Christopher Lee’s Dr. Neuhartt may be a “doctor,” but his bedside manner suggests he got his degree from the University of Body Snatching.
• The “pro-black” themes were apparently so shocking that the film was banned in Texas, because nothing says “outrage” like a white man facing consequences for colonialism.
• Vincent Price’s Julian somehow remains dignified even while making catastrophic moral decisions. That’s the power of the mustache.
• The witch doctor’s name, N’Galo, sounds like a lost Bond villain, and he’s one of the few Black characters in gothic horror of the time who isn’t treated as a pure stereotype, which is a minor miracle in 1969.
He’s quite a stylish witch doctor at that.
Director Gordon Hessler, stepping in after Michael Reeves fell ill, reshaped The Oblong Box into something richer and more subversive than its modest gothic trappings suggest. Where Reeves might have gone for bleak irony, Hessler leans into atmosphere and moral decay. He takes what could’ve been a by-the-numbers Poe adaptation and turns it into a sly critique of colonial exploitation and the lingering stain of empire, a bold move for 1969 horror. Hessler’s pacing is deliberate but never dull, allowing the story’s rot—moral and literal—to seep slowly into the viewer.
“I’ll just ponder here, weak and weary.”
The visual style owes much to cinematographer John Coquillon, whose eye for texture and light gives the film its haunting mood. Coquillon bathes everything in the soft, golden decay of a dying empire—sunlight streaming through dust, flickering candles, and the kind of blood-red filters that make you want to check your wallpaper for mildew. He captures England as both idyllic and sickly, a place where repression grows like fungus under the drapes. Later, Coquillon would work with Sam Peckinpah (Straw Dogs), but you can already see the restless energy here. The camera prowls, curious and uneasy, as though the film itself can’t quite decide who deserves sympathy.
The Red Hood, later to become a Batman villain?
Screenwriter Lawrence Huntington, with Christopher Wicking adding polish and bite, built a film that steals Poe’s title but writes its own moral. Instead of the Gothic cliché of madness and mistaken identity, they blend in voodoo, revenge, and colonial guilt. It’s an audacious hybrid—half Poe, half post-colonial guilt trip—and somehow it works. The story dares to make its horror not just about curses and coffins but about the violent legacy of imperialism. That subtext—one of retribution and mistaken punishment—was bold enough to get the movie banned in some U.S. states.
“They’ll never let this play down South.”
Vincent Price and Christopher Lee share only one brief scene together in The Oblong Box, but it’s a doozy. When they finally meet, Lee’s Dr. Neuhartt is bleeding out on the floor, delivering his lines with the calm resignation of a man who knows he’s about to exit both the scene and the film. Price’s Julian hovers with that weary aristocratic guilt of his, a man who knows he’s damned but still manages to look stylish about it. Their combined gravitas practically tilts the set; it’s less a horror pairing than a gothic duet, cruelly cut short just as the melody begins. Even in that fleeting moment, it’s like watching two masters duel over who can arch an eyebrow more dramatically.
He is king when it comes to handling a death scene.
In conclusion, The Oblong Box may not be pure Poe, but it’s pure Gothic gold. Hessler and Coquillon transform what could’ve been another dusty graveyard tale into a meditation on guilt, class, and the festering sins of empire; delivered with crimson masks, foggy moors, and Vincent Price in peak brooding form. It’s a film of moral rot and literal disfigurement, where revenge rises from the grave and history itself won’t stay buried.
