«The Haunted Palace» has nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe (credited as Edgar Allen Poe) apart from the title that was borrowed from his poem, but it is a shortened version of the novella «The Case of Charles Dexter Ward» by H. P. Lovecraft, who strove to force his tale with countless historical, linguistic, and Kabbalistic details, as well as some from his own imagination.
The film adaptation by Charles Beaumont simplified everything, in accordance with the format that Roger Corman drew up from the scripts by Richard Matheson, Beaumont and others for the movies of the Poe cycle. So, as a title in that series, «The Haunted Palace» is a motion picture that does not get lost in detail or reflection to tell, in less than 90 minutes, the story of the possession of Charles Dexter Ward by his sorcerer ancestor Joseph Curwen.
Lovecraft knew how to be ambiguous and leave the interpretations and deductions of his stories to the reader, but Beaumont was more explicit, inventing gestations of beings from the wombs of women from the port of Arkham, possessed by summoned archaic gods, which seems a bit far-fetched, if all they spawned were mutants; and on his side, Corman materializes the monster of the ancient fertilizing god, and shows --through a green filter-- a roaring but immobile prop, without causing any impression. Perhaps that is why the climax is so fast and rushed, so that there is little opportunity to see the entity or to let us think.
I found Floyd Crosby's camera movements and lighting admirable, as well as Daniel Haller's sets, especially those in the basement of the palace. But for every fluid camera movement or corporeal decoration, the budget betrays the movie with poor makeup and visual effects, while composer Ronald Stein, although he wrote a melodious central theme, does not know when to stop the music and let the images express their own "music".
Of the eight films in the Corman-Poe cycle, I think this one, «The Pit and the Pendulum» and «Tales of Terror» are the ones that I like the least. But with the next two productions, «The Masque of the Red Death» and «The Tomb of Ligeia» Roger Corman brought the cycle to full maturity.
The film adaptation by Charles Beaumont simplified everything, in accordance with the format that Roger Corman drew up from the scripts by Richard Matheson, Beaumont and others for the movies of the Poe cycle. So, as a title in that series, «The Haunted Palace» is a motion picture that does not get lost in detail or reflection to tell, in less than 90 minutes, the story of the possession of Charles Dexter Ward by his sorcerer ancestor Joseph Curwen.
Lovecraft knew how to be ambiguous and leave the interpretations and deductions of his stories to the reader, but Beaumont was more explicit, inventing gestations of beings from the wombs of women from the port of Arkham, possessed by summoned archaic gods, which seems a bit far-fetched, if all they spawned were mutants; and on his side, Corman materializes the monster of the ancient fertilizing god, and shows --through a green filter-- a roaring but immobile prop, without causing any impression. Perhaps that is why the climax is so fast and rushed, so that there is little opportunity to see the entity or to let us think.
I found Floyd Crosby's camera movements and lighting admirable, as well as Daniel Haller's sets, especially those in the basement of the palace. But for every fluid camera movement or corporeal decoration, the budget betrays the movie with poor makeup and visual effects, while composer Ronald Stein, although he wrote a melodious central theme, does not know when to stop the music and let the images express their own "music".
Of the eight films in the Corman-Poe cycle, I think this one, «The Pit and the Pendulum» and «Tales of Terror» are the ones that I like the least. But with the next two productions, «The Masque of the Red Death» and «The Tomb of Ligeia» Roger Corman brought the cycle to full maturity.