An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (1970)

Instant Favorite.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Vincent Price reads Edgar Allan Poe. Sounds very boring right - you may imagine Price dressed nicely in a chair, maybe with a fireplace at his side, reading a book to us in his acting voice - that is what I imagined anyway. Well rest assured that it's not at all what you would think nor exactly what I thought it would be.Basically Price is dressed for and sorta acts out each part/role while he tells us (not reads to us) each tell. Since the tales are written in first person (you know "I") it's a if you asked the character "tell me in detail what exactly happened" and each of the characters (played by Price) tells us what we wanted to know - what happened?! What I am saying is: This is NOT Price giving us a sit and read - this is Price acting out each role. In all honesty - I think Poe himself would have really enjoyed this "reading" of his tales.8.5/10

I really couldn't believe my eyes as I started to watch this. The thought of an actor (even someone as iconic as Mr Price) simply reading Poe made me wary - I've heard it done often, and not well at that (why do actors always seem to get hysterical when reading Poe?!)! But from the first few words of The Tell Tale Heart I was, as the previous comment stated, absolutely mesmerised. Transfixed. And very probably sat with my mouth hanging open. It was magnificent. Poe in its truest form. Spell-binding, macabre, poetic, horrifying, all of it. However - the greatest revelation was the man himself. Boy, could he act! I never realised this. Why, oh why didn't directors push him more?! He was capable of so much more... I've always enjoyed his performances, glorious in their over-the-top ripeness, but never, ever, dreamed he was capable of such control and such intensity...I remained stunned and awed by the experience!

I wish that this wasn't on a DVD with the underwhelming Tomb of Ligeia. In a perfect world this would have been matched up with my favorite Price/Poe movie, Masque of the Red Death, which is joined with the dreadful and tedious Premature Burial. Oh well. Price is good as always. This program consists of four Poe stories: "The Tell-Tale Heart" is creepy and morbid. "The Sphinx" is shorter and more humorous, rather minor. "The Cask of Amontillado" is much more rich and decadent, and the final story, "The Pit and the Pendulum" finds Price at his all-out best, reaching the kind of grand emotional climaxes that only he was capable of.

After reading nearly all of Poe's macabre stories, I can't imagine anyone more apt to read them with all the inherent horror intended by Edgar than Vincent Price. More of Poe's stories deal with inner torment than deal with some kind of outer menace, perhaps because Poe himself experienced much of the same torment that he wrote about. Mr. Price has the unique ability to take the listener on an eerie journey through this turmoil -- as well as transport the listener to a time when this awesomely-personal terror was unique and original.