The Tomb of Ligeia
Roger Corman
Initial release: November 29
“I love Vincent [Price]. He’s very sweet. But, going in, you suspect that Vincent could bang cats, chickens, girls, dogs, everything. You just feel that necrophilia might be one of his Basic Things.” — Robert Towne
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| images c/o FilmGrab |
Thus spake the screenwriter for The Tomb of Ligeia, officially the eighth and last film of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe cycle, one he had to really dig deep in Poe’s repertoire for after exhausting all his major works. After ripping off H. P. Lovecraft for The Haunted Palace and inventing an entire film, The Terror, out of leftovers and a bespoke script, I have to wonder why Corman still bothered with Poe. American International Pictures slapped Poe’s name on half their films regardless of their source material, they could’ve just done it again. This film is also solid proof that while Vincent Price is a fine actor, he should act his age.
And yet...
While Corman was fresh off #7 in the cycle, The Masque of the Ded Death, which as a high school English class staple is definitely one of Poe’s more well-known works, it’s clear that maybe there wasn’t really much left in this particular cask for Corman to exploit. You can only do the same thing so many times, after all. And let’s be real here: Corman’s built a career on doing the same thing as often as possible if it would save money. His camera work certainly improved over the course of the cycle, but he reused sets, props, actors, parts of scripts… anything he could drive into the ground, he did. All that being said, while The Tomb of Ligeia is as aggressively Roger Corman as ever, with simplistic set design and lighting, a dry script, a performance not really up to par for the aging Vincent Price, and (with some exceptions) frustratingly simple camera work, it’s curiously inventive in spots.
Part
of the problem is with Price. His casting was
mandated by AIP, and while the makeup department valiantly tried to
make him look younger, they didn’t quite succeed in making a man in his fifties look like a man in his twenties or thirties. This changes the
dynamic quite a bit, as the film’s leading lady, Elizabeth Shephard,
wasn’t even thirty yet. She honestly puts in a better performance than he
does, which is good because she was acting for two, both as the titular
Ligeia as well as Price’s new bride Lady Rowena.
As always with Corman’s Poe films, the script is something of an expansion on the original idea. The basic concept remains: a man buries his willful, passionate wife Ligeia, and later marries Lady Rowena, who seems to be gradually overtaken by Ligeia’s vengeful spirit. The original story was ambiguous as to whether this transformation was just an opium dream; the movie is instead a tale of (implied) necrophilia and outright possession from beyond the grave, expanding on themes of mesmerism in Poe’s work. And while the film has no relations to Poe’s short story The Black Cat — which Corman covered in the anthology film Tales of Terror — a black cat does feature heavily in this film, often implied to be the spirit of the dead Ligeia, and it sort of serves as the final antagonist.
Shot on location in England, the film does make good use of the exteriors, especially the old abbey ruins. Given how often Corman liked to reuse the same old sets for many of his exterior scenes, this is a lot nicer. The interiors, meanwhile, are largely the same drab soundstages that Corman has used for years. At some point they stop being interesting to look at.
The soundtrack is of little particular interest; in fact I would say that it’s notable only for how utterly dull it is. While most of Corman’s Poe cycle doesn’t have terribly interesting soundtracks, this one is much more extraneous than most.
Good
things about the film… some clever camera work almost makes up for otherwise pretty workmanlike cinematography. Putting the camera
behind the flames of a fireplace during a quiet hypnotism scene was
honestly brilliant. There’s also a dream sequence that’s far freakier than
the one in Masque of the Red Death. A few actual scares for once.
Ultimately, it’s obvious that Corman was running out of steam; even he seemed to know it. As a way to finish out the Poe cycle I would say it’s a bit of a low note, but there’s something to be said for being an old hand at this. Even if your boom mike’s shadow is visibly moving.