As the sixth entry in the “canonical” Poe cycle directed by Roger Corman, The Haunted Palace may surprise you by not being based on anything written by Edgar Allen Poe; indeed, it wasn't even originally meant for the cycle. But as typical for American International Pictures,
the studio for most of Corman’s films of the era, they changed the title of
the film to that of a Poe poem against Corman’s will. So if not Poe,
then what’s the film drawing from? Well, it turns out that the film is none other than an adaptation
of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,
released just as Lovecraft was seeing a revival of popularity in a growing nerd culture. That’s
not to say that this film ignited that popular revival, though with the long-running dearth of quality Lovecraft adaptations until recent years, fans
have long had to take what they can get. In this case, while it’s not
the worst adaptation, it’s still of a piece with Corman’s overall style:
cheap, cheesy, slightly sleazy, but still good fun. Seriously, what can
I say about Corman that I haven’t already said? The man was an
incredibly cheap bastard, whose sense of thrift knows no bounds, heavily
relying on soundstages, hackneyed scripts, and workmanlike photography.
And yet sometimes he surprises you.
If you’ve seen his other film The Terror you might recognize the front of the titular palace and its dungeon as being reused from that film (or maybe it was the other way around, given The Terror’s piecemeal production.) And I’m pretty sure that flintlock pistol’s from House of Usher too. That’s the fun of watching Corman’s films from this era: there's a clear sense that these movies are Corman's personal arthouse productions, reusing soundstages and props and Vincent Price to give himself a canvas upon which Corman’s talent as a filmmaker show through.
The
basic plot is that in 18th century New England, a bunch of villagers
burn a local warlock at a tree (using a soundstage that The Terror
also used.) A century and ten years later, his descendant, Charles
Dexter Ward, and his wife Ann, inherit the house (a “palace”) and move
in. The locals of Arkham are none too friendly to someone who looks so
much like the man who bewitched their ancestors and cursed them with
mutations, but Charles vacillates between wanting to leave and wanting
to stay — and he’s slowly coming under a strange influence, the longer
he remains. It turns out that Charles’ ancestor, Joseph Curwen, was in
the middle of some profane ritual when he was interrupted by the
villagers of Arkham, and when Charles moves into the place, he proves a
perfect vessel for Curwen’s still-lingering soul to hijack and attempt
to finish the ritual. The
movie actually namedrops Chtulhu and Yog-Sothoth, which might be the
first utterances of either name on a screen, ever, though the actual
thing in the pit they’re trying to summon looks more like a bad action
figure, sadly. It doesn’t even move!
In spite of the laugh-out-loud effects failure of the thing in the pit, the movie has its fair share of scares. A creepy, zombie-like moment where Charles and Ann are being slowly surrounded by deformed villagers (until a church bell summons them away) is pretty tense despite bad makeup. Actually, bad makeup is pretty common in this film. The possessed Charles, as well as his two buddies, all have this ghastly, vaguely brownish-green makeup on to give them a corpselike appearance, but it keeps rubbing off on their shirt collars.
If
there’s one thing interesting about this film it’s the appearance of
Lon Chaney Jr., another horror film veteran like Price and Boris
Karloff, though this is unfortunately his only Corman appearance — and
it wouldn’t have happened if Karloff wasn’t sick at the time. I do enjoy
seeing these old hands showing up in this kind of B-movie schlock; while
it’s obvious they’re mostly doing it to pay rent, they bring their A
game to movies that arguably don’t deserve it, and by so doing, improve
what would otherwise be boring trash.
The Haunted Palace isn’t boring trash, but it is pretty standard for Corman, who has regularly cranked out films like this for years and had gotten a bit lazy about it. At number 6 in the canonical 8 Poe films, it’s clear that the cycle was running out of steam by this point. And yet for all that, as always with Corman, this film can still surprise you. It’s a seminal work in the history of Lovecraft adaptations, and while there are better Lovecraft films, only Corman can give you this particular flavor of cheese.
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