CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964)

 A MONUMENT OF HORROR! 

Yes, this is a big fave of mine since back in the 1980's when I got my VHS tape from Sinister Cinema.  Last year, Vinegar Syndrome included it in it's box set DANZA MACABRA VOLUME 2 and it's never looked better.  The absolutely exquisite camerawork by Riccardo Pallottini is breathtakingly atmospheric.  But even in a scratchy VHS, CASTLE OF BLOOD is possibly my favourite Barbara Steele film.  The above-mentioned atmospheric cinematography is a huge reason; there is more spooky atmosphere in this film than in any ten movies.  Directed by Antonio Margheriti (Ok Ok get all your INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS play outta the way and we'll continue) with a sure hand that keeps just the correct measured pace (unless, of course, you have no attention span and then well . . . the angels will weep for you) that works perfectly for a gothic horror movie. 

We start things off with reporter Alan Foster (George Riviere) entering the Four Devils pub in London where a visiting Edgar Allan Poe (Silvano Tranquilli who is physically a pretty good approximation of the poet) is holding court at a table telling his tale of 'BERENICE'.  Foster approaches the table saying he's read that story and Poe insists that every single one of his stories truly happened.  They are not fantasies or fiction.  Poe's companion at table is Lord Blackwood (formerly 'Blackblood' before his family cleaned it up) makes Foster a wager that he can't stay the night in Blackwood manor house; no one who has taken the bet has ever emerged alive.  The bet is 100 pounds but Foster can only afford 10; so the bet is on.  Now, while Blackwood, Poe and Foster take their carriage ride to the Blackwood house, I have to tell you that this isn't technically a Halloween movie.  This all takes place on the night of All Souls' (November 2nd) but close enough.  The Halloweeny vibe is so fantastic you can watch this movie in July and it's Halloween. 

But back to the carriage ride.  And the nice thing about the DANZA MACABRE box set is that it not only includes the English-dubbed American version but also includes (for the first time, to my knowledge) the original Italian print which restores previously cut scenes such as what happens in the carriage ride; Foster conducts an interview with Poe which is fascinating.  All prints of the film feature Foster saying he's going to interview the author and then it cuts to their arrival at Blackwood house; however, here we get the scene of their discussion inside the carriage and it's a good one.  Another previously cut but restored scene features some bazoombas, so that's good as well.

Blackwood & Poe drop Foster off at the place and there commences an absolutely beautiful scene of the reporter entering the gate and walking through the cemetery, entering the stables then the house proper and exploring the downstairs rooms.  Anyone who thinks this goes on too long is insane and you need your movie-watching license revoked.  Again, why are you watching horror films at all since you apparently have no idea what they are about.  THIS is what they are about.  If you think this is 'slow' or boring', go watch FOG CITY.  You deserve each other!  But now that my rant against know-nothing tots is concluded, back to CASTLE OF BLOOD. 

Foster encounters the lovely Elizabeth Blackwood (played by the lovely Barbara Steele hallowed be her name) who reveals she is the sister of Lord Blackwood and, every year, he has a bet with somebody who shows up on All Souls' Eve.  Elizabeth wears a long, white nightgown throughout the film in the best 'Had-I-But-Known' gothic tradition. 

She takes Foster upstairs (which she has kept much better maintained than the crumbling first floor) to a bedroom and gets the hots for Foster in record time.  The fun is spoiled by Julia (Margrete Robsahm) whose portrait Foster saw downstairs and seems to turn up in order to spoil Elizabeth's fun.  The two women depart, leaving Foster to read a book on metaphysical science written by a Dr. Carmus.  Soon, Elizabeth shows back up at Foster's door and they quick have a 'roll in ze hay'.  While resting his head on Elizabeth's bosom, he panics when he doesn't hear her heartbeat.  Elizabeth appears dead but then speaks. 

Well, yeah, she IS dead, actually.  All the 'people' in the house are and they are condemned to repeat the least night of their lives every year on All Souls' Eve.  More ghostly characters make their appearances throughout the film as they are condemned to endlessly relive their murders.  This includes Dr. Carmus played by the wonderful Arturo Dominici; who was so memorable in Barbara Steele's first Italian horror film:  Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY as the demonic Javutich. 

Here, Dominici is much calmer as Dr. Carmus but he's no less dead and damned.  At certain points, Dr. Carmus acts as a sort of 'Ghost of Christmas Past' to Foster as he accompanies the reporter in watching various scenes from the past re-enacted by the ghosts. Turns out, these ghostly spirits are kinda vampires as well; each year they drink the blood of the poor schlep who makes a bet to stay in the house all night so their ghostly spirits can live again -- if only for one night.  In a great special feature discussion by Stephen Thrower, he posits that this concept of endlessly repeating your last night of life comes from an August Strindberg play called DANCE OF DEATH since there is absolutely NO Edgar Allan Poe story that approximates CASTLE OF BLOOD's plot.  This device coupled with the 'spend the night in a haunted house for a bet' trope has been done probably dozens of times but rarely as well as it's done in CASTLE OF BLOOD. 

As with most of these stories when a skeptic is confronted with the supernatural, there isn't exactly a happy ending as the spook-denier MUST be taught a lesson.  "After all," as Bela Lugosi told us at the curtain of the stage play DRACULA, "there ARE such things!!!".  CASTLE OF BLOOD (or DANZA MACABRA as the Italian version was released) is really the pinnacle of Italian gothic horror of this era with B&W cinematography that is unmatched and a spooky castle set that was (unbelievably) re-used from a Toto comedy film made previously!!!  Margheriti would reuse this set once again in HORROR CASTLE aka LA VERGINE DI NORIMBERGA which, owing to the vagaries of Italian cinema, was made after CASTLE OF BLOOD but released BEFORE it.  Oh and besides ALL this gothic goodness, we also get a cute lil black kitten!

CASTLE OF BLOOD, I reiterate, is one of my absolute faves and it was a joy to rewatch it once again in it's pristine, restored cut of the film.  Boy, what a good'n! 

B'TWIXT NOW AND SUNRISE [2011/2022]

 "THE FOG ROLLED IN OVER THE LAKE..."

  Sorry, I just HAD to start with that.  If you've seen the movie, you'll know why.  The has to be the weirdest viewing experience I've had so far this year!  I never saw the original version entitled "TWIXT" in 2011 which most critics lambasted while Cahiers du Cinema simultaneously named it one of the best film of the year.  I only watched the brand new "Authorized Version" Francis Ford Coppola released last month.  So naturally I cannot speak to whatever differences there are between the two versions.  However, THIS 2022 version wow-ed me in the oddest manner and has sat with me since I saw it days ago!  I can see why people in 2011 (and those watching the new version now in 2023) either love it or (more probably) hate it.  Especially with the almost violently abrupt ending!  At first, when I realized the movie was over, I had a momentary knee-jerk "NO!!!!" reaction but seconds later I changed my mind and thought it was right for some reason totally unknown to me.  If this is all very confusing, it's appropriate for a mystifying film which was based on a spooky dream Coppola had.  The director recorded his recollections of the strange dream into a tape recorder immediately upon awaking and the dreamlike logic is expertly ported over into the film.  Besides Coppola's dream, the director also works through the grief and trauma of the death of his son Gian-Carlo in that bizarre boating accident!  Grief and dream-logic are the two main themes in this movie and keeping those two concepts in your mind will hopefully make the viewing of this film ring true.

Val Kilmer plays lower-grade horror fiction writer Hall Baltimore who has arrived in a small

town during a book signing tour.  The town doesn't have an 'actual' bookstore so Baltimore sets up the best he can.  The town DOES have a 7-sided clock tower/belfry which is infamous for having 7 clock faces each telling a different time!  Not a single person comes to see Baltimore at his book signing -- until Sheriff Bobby LaGrange drops in on the author to get a book signed but also to ask Baltimore if he'd like to collaborate with the Sheriff on a book about the local murder spree!  In the morgue is a dead woman with a large wooden stick stuck in her chest.  This seems to be the serial killer's trademark.  Or, more to LaGrange's thinking, they're vampires.  The Sheriff wants to collaborate with Baltimore on a book entitled "The Vampire Executions".  LaGrange also has a big sign in front of his house that reads "GOT BATS?" because he has a sideline in building bat houses (birdhouses but for bats)!    Hall Baltimore is desperately in need of money as well as a 'bulletproof' idea for a new book which will make him a best-selling author once again.  Especially since his wife (hilariously played by Kilmer's actual former wife Joanne Whalley!!!) is threatening to do something terrible to his first edition of Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS unless he comes up with a book advance PDQ!  Baltimore is also an alcoholic who is still grieving at the death of his young daughter (which is revealed to be in exactly the same type of accident which killed Coppola's son Gian-Carlo).  The town also is known for an old, abandoned hotel in which Edgar Allan Poe once slept. 

While out walking in the night, Baltimore encounters the boarded-up hotel as well as a pale 12 year old girl (looking rather goth) named Virginia or V. as she prefers to be called (beautifully played by Elle Fanning).  She says she is teased by the other girls who call her 'Vampira' because of her braces-enmeshed teeth.  Coming back to the abandoned hotel, it is suddenly lit up and open for business.  V. refuses to go inside but Baltimore goes in (at the proprietoress's invitation) for a beer and possibly something to eat.  All this is shot in a wonderful, atmospheric, dreamlike way which brings to mind Coppola's baroque BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA.  Amongst all this spookiness there is also the fact that, in the past, 12 children were murdered in this very same hotel by Pastor Allan Floyd and are all still buried underneath the stone floor in the dining room!  Oh yes, and there are a bunch of 'evil' Satan worshippers down by the river led by one Flamingo (played nicely by Alden Ehrenreich) who are probably vampires.  And I can't forget the fact that Hall Baltimore is visited by a ghostly Edgar Allan Poe himself (spokily evoked by Ben Chaplin).  I'm sure there are dozens of other details I'm leaving out (including the dead woman in the morgue communicating with Baltimore and the Sheriff through a Ouija board) but this film is loaded with spooky treats.

But fair warning, this is not your ordinary movie!  Coppola mixes hilarious comedy with intense emotion focusing on grief, death and coping with both.  While there is a very definite story/plot, it is wound up in bizarre dream logic of the flavour of a Lucio Fulci 'Gates of Hell' movie.  This is a meditation wearing the cloak of a horror movie.  Your tolerance for such things will directly influence how you respond to this film.  The cast (yes, even Val Kilmer) is top notch and all seem to 'get' what Coppola is going for here.  Val Kilmer's 'breakdown' scene in which he probably ad-libbed some celebrity impressions (including his co-star Marlon Brando from DR. MOREAU) I found to be quite funny (while others seem to hate it).  Bruce Dern, as always, is a welcome presence and his goofy Sheriff Bobby LaGrange hits all the comedy without overselling it.  As I already stated, the fact that Kilmer's ex-wife Joanne Whalley plays his character's estranged and hostile wife Denise is absolutely inspired casting!  Ben Chaplin looks uncannily like Poe and Elle Fanning is suitably haunting as V.  So if straightforward movies are your thing, B'TWIXT is probably not for you.  But if you're open to tons of atmosphere, the working through of grief and dream-logic, you might like to give this movie a try.

DOCTOR WHO: NEVERMORE [2009]

 "SOMETIMES ALL I AM IS A CAT'S PAW!" 

This go round we find the Doctor with his brand new companion Tasmin Drew (Niky Wardley) after the 'companion casting call' of SITUATION VACANT.  With Lucie Bleedin' Miller gone, Tasmin keeps the witty comebacks coming but in a different way than Lucie did.  It's always difficult when a change of companions happens but Wardley quickly makes Tasmin an interesting, entertaining character.  As you've no doubt guessed by the adventure's title, this one is a heavily Edgar Allan Poe inspired outing.  From Big Finish's own blurb:  "  A bizarre manifestation in the Control Room forces the TARDIS onto the Plutonian shores of the irradiated world Nevermore, whose sole inhabitant is the war criminal Morella Wendigo – a prisoner of this devastated planet. But the Doctor and his new companion aren’t Morella’s only visitors. Senior Prosecutor Uglosi fears the arrival of an assassin, after the blood of his prize prisoner. An assassin with claws…There’s no escape from Nevermore, whose raven-like robot jailers serve to demonstrate Uglosi’s macabre obsession with the works of the 19th century horror writer Edgar Allan Poe. An obsession that might yet lead to the premature burial of everyone on the planet’s surface – wreathed in the mist they call the Red Death!"  Not only do they have characters with names straight out of Poe (Morella, Berenice but also a shout-out to the Universal 1934 film THE BLACK CAT; guess what Prosecutor Uglosi's name unscrambles spells!  And also there's another character important to the plot named Verdegast (which is Bela Lugosi's character in THE BLACK CAT as well).  Oh, and yes, while the Doctor is giving Tasmin a tour of the TARDIS, there's suddenly a black puddy tat which the pair chase around.  As if all this wasn't Poe-y enough, the author himself also makes an appearance.  The robotic raven guards are nicely cracked characters themselves that seem not too right in the programming; and their voices are somewhat Dalek-sounding but with enough raveny differences to make them different enough sonically to stand on their own. 

Niky Wardley, Catherine Tate & David Tennant

NEVERMORE is one you really have to listen to closely to unravel all that's going on; in fact, I'll probably give this a second listen eventually to clarify some things.  But the ride is really fun; especially for us Poe fans!  This might start sounding a bit cliched but Paul McGann and Niky Wardley also have a really nice chemistry and work well together from the start.  It's always nice to have a companion who needles the Doctor now and then and Tamsin starts right in with her quips.  When she spots the kitty cat, she automatically thinks it's the Doctor's pet.  "There's two types of men . . . one's a serial killer and the other is one who lives at home and loves his cat . . . and it's nothing to be ashamed of!"  Of course, Niky Wardley has another connection to DOCTOR WHO in that priceless Red Nose Day "Am I Bovvered" sketch with David Tennant alongside Catherine Tate.  Fenella Woodgar as Morella Wendigo gives her character an evil whispery menace which is soooooooooooooo good but not a one note vocalization; she changes to an acid-tongued snarkiness with a knife-sharp sense of humour alternately.  This really works even if the description here doesn't make it sound like it does.  Other heavy hitters in the cast are Emilia Fox (Polanski's THE PIANIST) as Berenice and Michael J. Shannon (who, among other things, played JFK in that episode of RED DWARF) as Senior Prosecutor Uglosi.  There are Poe quotes galore in this story.  In fact, at one point the ravens demand that the Doctor recite from memory Poe's poem THE RAVEN as sort of a password.  Many Poe stories are referenced and, in fact, re-enacted also. NEVERMORE was written by DOCTOR WHO vet Alan Barnes (who penned Paul McGann's first Big Finish adventure STORM WARNING) and directed by Big Finish honcho Nicholas "EXTERMINATE" Briggs.  Somewhat wacky and a little bit spooky, this is an above-average lot of fun! 

THE TELL-TALE HEART [1953 British film]

 NEWLY-DISCOVERED LOST POE FILM! 

One of the treasures of the BFT SHORT SHARP SHOCKS collection is this thought-lost short film from 1953.  Not to be confused with the American animated short film of THE TELL-TALE HEART from 1953 narrated by James Mason and produced by UPA.  No, this is the British short film produced by Adelphi Films and stars Stanley Baker as Edgar Allan Poe and directed by J.B. Williams.  Long thought lost, the film was discovered by a Scottish movie fan in his attic in October 2018 after having bought it for five pounds in a Brighton junk shop in 1984!  This 16mm print is the only known copy of the film.  

This 20 minute short features the aforesaid Stanley Baker as Edgar Allan Poe who is seated at his candle-lit desk writing out the tale.  Baker is almost unrecognizable at first in his Poe makeup.  The entire film takes place in this dimly-lit garret in which Baker basically recites the actual story.  There are no cutaways or re-enactments of the story.  Much like in Vincent Price's AN EVENING OF EDGAR ALLAN POE, this film is a one-man show.  And what a show!  Stanley Baker is absolutely mezmerizing as he recites the tale of THE TELL-TALE HEART and had me on the edge of my seat.  This is some feat for such a familiar story. 

Baker was a hell of an actor and he uses every ounce of his talent to convey the story and bring it to life.  Quite often during the film's 20 minutes, Baker is actually quite menacing in his calm madness and seems like a coiled spring ready to pounce.  I would without hesitation call this film the greatest live-action version of THE TELL-TALE HEART alongside the equally classic 1953 American animated version.  This is one you can't miss.  It's sadly only available on the British BFI disc SHORT SHARP SHOCKS VOLUME ONE so you will need an all-region playah but, if anything is worth getting one for, it's this short film.  

RICHARD CORBEN {1940 - 2020}

WE LOST ONE OF THE GREATS THIS PAST YEAR WITH THE PASSING OF RICHARD CORBEN. 

Richard Corben with death masks of Peter Lorre & Bela Lugosi

Always one of my favourite illustrators and comic book artists, I think he's probably best remembered for his string of horror stories for the Warren titles like CREEPY and COMIX INTERNATIONAL, his creation of Den (seen in the movie HEAVY METAL) and, especially, for his Poe adaptations.  As a belated tribute to this great artist, here is a small gallery of his work.

Possibly Corben's final cover for The Creeps # 28 Feb. 2021

 

POE WITH PIPES - JOHN CARRADINE (1975)

 I RECENTLY PICKED UP A BEAUTIFUL NEAR-MINT VINYL COPY OF THIS 1975 GEM FROM THE ELECTRIC LEMON RECORD CO. 

This is the same legendary label which gave us such Halloween favourites as THE PHANTOM OF THE ORGAN, THE VAMPYRE AT THE HARPSICHORD, MUSIC FOR ZOMBIES and DOCTOR DRUID'S HAUNTED SEANCE.  Most of these records featured Verne Langdon on the organ and POE WITH PIPES is no exception.  Here we have a record tailor-made for the Halloween season with the venerable, sonorous-voiced John Carradine emoting the poems of Edgar Allan Poe while Langdon's funereal organ plays in the background.  On display are the Poe-ems "The Conqueror Worm", Ulalume, Annabelle Lee, The Sleeper (Irene), The Raven and A Dream Within A Dream.  Ah yes, the soundtrack for my Countdown to Halloween, all right.  And I believe someone has posted the album of youtubers so you can listen to it for your own Haunted Halloween.  Love that album cover, too!   

THE BLACK CAT [1966]

GRITTY.  GRIMY.  SLEAZY.  SLIMY.   

The most low-down film version of Poe I've ever seen.  The leading man and leading lady never made another film and the director only made one other film called SEX AND THE ANIMALS so you know we're in the relative skid row of film making.  I'm not sure if Pluto the black cat ever made another movie either.  In fact, I'm not sure Pluto even made it out of THIS film; although all assurances are that the cat was never hurt during filming.  There are however several scenes in which the cat is treated fairly roughly.  This is why I have such conflicted feeling about this film since I hate it when Pluto is manhandled and tossed around but then love it for it's grimy, queasy fascination.  There something here which is some sort of creative spark which elevates it from the gutter is so happily wallows in.  

Lou and Diana are celebrating their first anniversary in the large mansion they've just inherited at the recent death of Lou's mother.  Lou gives Diana a bracelet for an anniversary present and she gives him a black cat that Lou names Pluto.  Lou is fond of pets as he has an entire room devoted to his many caged animals from capuchin monkey to racoon to toucan.  Oddly, Lou then bids his wife good night and goes to spend his anniversary with Pluto and the rest of the animals while Diana is left to cry herself to sleep.  Here we have the first intimations that Lou ain't quite right as he prefers to spend his anniversary night with his pets and not his wife.  With the help of inheritance money, Lou fancies himself a novelist but gets nowhere and starts to drink heavily.  His behaviour becomes even more erratic and he picks fights in bars and knocks his wife around; causing Diana and the maid to walk out.  Now quite out of it, Lou then gouges out the cat's right eye with a switchblade thinking it's a demon or the spirit of his hated father.  The next morning, Lou is sober and guilty over what he did to the cat.  Diana and the maid return but, still drinking Lou is convinced the cat is his father and strings Pluto up with electrical wire and electrocutes it.  This causes a short which burns down the mansion. 

After discovering the house and contents were not insured, a now broke Lou has a breakdown and is sent to a mental hospital where he is subjected to shock treatments.  Once released, the couple move to a house in the suburbs but Lou eventually relapses and keeps drinking.  One night on a bender, Lou finds a black cat that looks very much like Pluto and brings it home.  Lou eventually relapses into thinking the cat is a returned Pluto who is the spirit of his father and decides to kill it again.  When Diana asks Lou to help her get something from the basement, the cat follows them down and Lou goes after the cat with an axe.  Diana attempts to prevent him for harming the cat and Lou buries the axe in Diana's blonde head.  Lou walls up Diana's corpse behind a brick wall in the basement.  The maid reports Diana missing and the police show up to search Lou's house.  As in Poe's story, the cat is heard meowing from behind the brick wall and the police tear it down discovering Diana's corpse.  Lou runs out to his Jaguar and leads the police in a car chase.  While speeding down the road, a black cat appears in front of him and Lou swerves and dies in a fiery car crash.

Robert Frost is quite good as Lou; depicting his escalating madness without chewing the scenery.  Robyn Baker is good as well as Diana but has considerably less to do.  The best performance in the film is surely Ann McAdams (better known as Annabelle Weenick) as an aging whore Lou meets in a nightclub; her world-weariness and hurt at being constantly buffeted by a cruel world are palpable. Weenick has a long genre pedigree appearing in DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT, ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN, DEADLY BLESSING, CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION, DON'T HANG UP, Larry Buchanan's IT'S ALIVE, CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE and THE TRIAL OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD.  The soundtrack of the film features jazzy music as well as rock & roll.  Scotty McKay and his band play such old rockers as BO DIDDLEY, BROWN-EYED HANDSOME MAN and SINNERMAN.  One beautiful bit of direction occurs right after Lou gouges out Pluto's eye; we cut to McCay and his band rocking the nightclub and each band member is wearing an eye patch over their left eye!  Brilliant! 

THE BLACK CAT was thought to be lost until the late head honcho of Something Weird Video Mike Vraney discovered a print back in 2001.  The film looks even better on the recent Hemisphere Pictures blu ray box set which is where I watched it.     

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM [1991]

 1991-1993 WAS SMACK-DAB AT THE HEIGHT OF MY PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH CHARLES BAND!  Or Full Moon Entertainment, to be more precise and less click-baity. 

And my friend Cheeks and I were big-time fans!  Right across Route 73 was the Blockbuster Video we now frequented since it swallowed up Erol's Video Store.  I can't remember if Cheeks or I saw our first Full Moon Video sitting there on the shelf; maybe we both discovered them at the same time and told each other about it.  Not the best movies, maybe, but boy did they have a sense of fun and spirit.  Long before apres-credits scenes were a thing, I can remember the joy and wonder of first discovering that, if you sat through (or rather fast forwarded through) the end credits of a Full Moon VHS, a secret treasure awaited you that was at the time unknown except for the real fans:  Full Moon Video Zone.  A little bonus from ole Charlie Band to the fans that was a sort of video magazine/making of/coming attractions treat!  And that's a long way to go to get to the movie at hand here:  1991's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Lance Henriksen as Torquemada.  This is one of those videos I rented back at this time and I remember not liking it.  I don't know why.  Maybe it was because it wasn't very "Full Moon" like?  I was already a big fan of Stuart Gordon's movies so what gives?!?!  I don't know but I guess I wasn't in the right mood to watch it when I did?  Well, after a few decades I gave it another try on blu-ray instead of VHS and this time I thought it was good.  Not fantastic, but quite good.  

Apparently another studio was going to make this Stuart Gordon film starring Peter O'Toole as Torquemada but the deal fell through.  All credit to Charles Band for picking up the film and allowing Gordon (albeit with a much smaller budget) to make the movie.  There's a lot of really good stuff here but somehow for me the film doesn't equal the sum of its parts entirely.  Let's list the great stuff.  Lance Henriksen as Torquemade gives a terrific performance; he's believably conflicted and unhinged by his religious zealotry and conveys his multitude of issues brilliantly.  Also deserving of acting props is Rona De Ricci as female lead Maria. 

This is only one of two films De Ricci made which is astonishing because her performance here is excellent.  The always excellent Jeffrey Combs is a sheer delight giving inquisitor Francisco a jaded sly wit which lightens the often grim proceedings.  Another absolutely stellar performance is by veteran character actor Frances Bay as Esmeralda; who must be the only ACTUAL witch the Spanish Inquisition ever imprisoned!  Frances Bay has always been a helluvan actor and has a credit list as long as Reed Richards' arm and here she's just as delightfully funny and sympathetic as ever.  The little exchange between Jeffrey Combs and Frances Bay as she's on her way to be burned at the stake is priceless! 

And then there's the cameo by Oliver Reed as the Pope's legate who has come to tell Torquemade to knock it off with all the torture stuff.  Contrary to popular believe, Reed wasn't drunk when on screen.  According to Stuart Gordon himself, Reed got roaring drunk beforehand but Monday morning he was on set early, sober and prepared.  Reed is also fantastic in his small but pivotal role as the Cardinal who falls afoul of Torquemade a la "A CASK OF AMONTILLADO".  The movie looks fantastic as well with production design by Full Moon vet Giovanni Natalucci (FROM BEYOND, TERROR VISION, DOLLS) and set decoration by Dario Argento-collaborator Maurizio Garrone (TENEBRE, INFERNO) also getting high marks.  Richard Band, as usual, lifts Carl Orff's CARMINA BURANA for his musical score this time.  All in all, Full Moon's/Stuart Gordon's adaptation of the classic Poe tale is very good but somehow for me is lacking something I can't put my (tortured) finger on.

THE RAVEN'S RETURN FLIGHT

ANOTHER COMIX VERSION OF EDGAR ALLAN POE'S "THE RAVEN"; THIS TIME FROM SKYWALD'S HORROR-MOOD MAG "SCREAM" # 11.

QUOTH THE RAVEN . . . RICHARD CORBEN

WARREN MAGS BROUGHT US A LITTLE CHUNK OF SEVENTIES HORROR GOODNESS WITH THIS ADAPTATION OF POE-ETRY FEATURING THE LUSCIOUS ART OF RICHARD CORBEN FROM THEIR FULL-COLOUR, GLOSSY-PAPER "COMIX INTERNATIONAL" #2 {1975}.