Don't you just love these old kooky horror pictures, look at this cast! Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone, three ghoulish tales with three epic stars. As I'm sure you all know this is one of Roger Corman's Poe movie adaptations that made up his eight movie series (give or take). Most of which all starred Price and a selection of the greatest horror icons of the silver screen.The movie is narrated by Price and all three tales star Price...so its a Price vehicle then. After the admittedly pointless narration we kick off with 'Morella' with Price. A young woman travels home to see her father (Price) who dwells on his own within a dusty cobweb ridden mansion. The woman wants to reconcile with her father after many years of no contact, the reason being her mother died giving birth to her and her father has never forgiven her for it. In fact he kept the young girls dead mother in the bedroom where she died, a rotting corpse, as you do. As the pair slowly grow closer together over time events take a turn for the worst as the spirit of the dead mother comes back for revenge.This entire story seemed totally ludicrous to me frankly. A woman dies giving birth to her daughter and blames the baby on her deathbed for her demise. I mean yeah sure the baby did cause it but that's not the babies fault sheesh. Then that child's father (Price) hates her for most of her young life because of it?! The ending is even more weird because I have no clue why the dead mother comes back from the dead and does what she does (kill her daughter and husband), I also have no real clue why the mothers resurrected body swaps places with her recently murdered daughter, and why they then swap back again once the husband is dead (Price). So the dead mother comes back from the dead and kills her daughter for revenge and kills her husband whom she loved very much for...? I don't know.I loved the visuals in this short tale. I adored the old creaking mansion set on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, the haunted house look with lush period interior decorations (whatever period it was). The whole atmosphere in this tale was perfectly creepy and just what you'd expect from this type of old fashioned spooky story, its just a shame the plot made no sense.The second tale was 'The Black Cat' which also incorporated 'The Cask of Amontillado', this starred Peter Lorre alongside Price. Here we see the drunken loutish Herringbone (Lorre) who abuses his wife by taking all her hard earned money and spending every night at the local pub. After stumbling into a wine tasting event he meets up with and befriends Fortunato Luchresi (Price) a wine expert. Herringbone invites Luchresi back to his place for drinks but Luchresi falls for Herringbone's wife and the pair have an affair. Herringbone gets his own back by luring Luchresi once again to his place for drinks, drugs him and walls him up in the cellar with his wife.Its called The Black Cat because Herringbone's wife has a black cat which Herringbone dislikes. In the end the cat gives his murderous game away but to be honest the cat doesn't actually feature much in the tale so it seems rather moot. This is the one story that is presented in a light-hearted way with silly humour. Both Lorre and Price really have a good time hamming it up something chronic, the best example being the brilliant wine tasting competition between the pair. Again there are so many plot holes and conveniences like how on earth Herringbone manages to get anything done when he's so utterly drunk. This short tale isn't exactly scary but more of a parody or spoof really, its a fun one.Lastly its 'The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar' with Basil Rathbone. Price's character of Valdemar is dying from a disease, Mr Carmichael (Rathbone) alleviates his pain through hypnosis. Carmichael does this as Valdemar passes away which traps his soul between the world of the living and the dead, in limbo as it were. Valdemar begs Carmichael to release him so he can pass over completely but Carmichael will not...for some reason. In the end Carmichael tries to force Valdemar's wife into marriage but she is rescued by the rotting corpse of Valdemar...somehow.Again the plot makes little sense with no proper explanations, it all just happens. This is probably the eeriest tale with Rathbone on fine form as the dastardly villain although I'm not really sure what his goal is here. He keeps Valdemar's soul trapped in limbo but I dunno why, dunno what he's trying to achieve. I'm not entirely sure if the hypnosis was meant to ease Valdemar's death or prevent it because when he does die everyone acts as though something has gone wrong. No clue how Valdemar's soulless rotting shell of a corpse manages to spring to life and save his wife from Carmichael either but hey ho.All in all I enjoyed this little anthology of horror, it wasn't scary or overly eerie but it was a barrel of high spirits. Some fantastic period set visuals with costumes and set details, some lovely old hokey special effects and hands-on practical makeup work and of course the three legendary movie icons. Probably one of the better anthologies I've seen mainly for visuals, its let down by the weak stories which other anthologies (Amicus) easily trump.6.5/10

What was probably too tense for T.V. anthology series like "Thriller" or "The Twilight Zone" ended up on the big screen in multi-story feature films which took short stories and adapted them into segments 2-20-30 minutes long. "Tales of Terror" has three stories, two dramatic and one comic, but all having two things in common: Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price. Wine flows in all three segments, and in all of them, the underlying motive for some of the characters is a definite act of lust.The first segment, "Morella", shows the revenge of a dead woman (Leona Gage) against the daughter she blames for her early demise and the husband (Price) who has built a shrine to her and worshiped her for years, neglecting his daughter. Why Morella is so vindictive is never really explained other than the fact that she blames giving birth for dying three months later. In spite of that detail being omitted, it is truly suspenseful and ends deliciously horrifically.The most popular of the three segments is the middle one, a variation of "The Black Cat", and not at all like the 1934 Karloff/Lugosi movie of the same name. This is the comical filling in the horror sandwich, obvious from the moment that the portly Peter Lorre comes home drunk to his much younger sexpot wife (Joyce Jameson), demanding money so he can go out and drink some more wine. He ends up in a wine drinking contest with professional wine taster Price who escorts the drunken Lorre home and meets the busty Jameson whom he is soon seeing on the side. Lorre plots delicious revenge, not realizing that his worst enemy will be the one to give him away."The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", the final part, is perhaps the goriest and definitely the most eerie. It is also extremely disturbing in the sense that it shows, with great pain, what happens when a body dies but the mind still lives, in this case Price being the victim of the witch doctor-like Basil Rathbone. It is the fact that Price considers Rathbone a friend that this ends up being the most evil of all actions in the three stories, because there seems to be no reason for Rathbone's obsessive desire to keep Price's mind still alive, in torture with a dead, decomposing body, and it seems to be even more horrific than being buried alive.In watching these Gothic horror films from American International, the viewer can find a ton of entertainment, but there are some elements of each of these stories which classifies women in general in three ways: absolutely evil, absolutely good, and absolutely unfaithful. There are no in betweens for his female characters, while Price's characters are all urbane, witty, romantic and all of a sudden nefarious. Another aspect of many of these stories is the way Price turns from noble to insane, and the gruesome ways (usually a fire) his characters are dispatched.

"Tales of Terror" presents three adaptations of good stories by Edgar Allan Poe directed by Roger Corman. (1) "Morella": The twenty and something years old Lenora (Maggie Pierce) returns to the derelict house of her estranged father Locke (Vincent Price). Her mother Morella (Leona Gage) died after giving birth to Lenora and Locke still grieves and blames Lenora for the death of his beloved wife. Lenora finds the corpse of Morella on her bed and Locke tells that he could not leave her in a coffin six feet under. Locke tries to make amends for abandoning Lenora but something supernatural happens. "Morella" is the weakest segment of this trilogy of horror tales. The good theatrical performances and the excellent sets make it worthwhile watching. My vote is six.(2) "The Black Cat": The drunkard Montresor (Peter Lorre) is an abusive man that spends the money that his wife Annabel (Joyce Jameson) earns working drinking wine in a tavern. He also mistreats her black cat. One day, Montresor meets the connoisseur of fine wines Fortunato Luchresi (Vincent Price) and he disputes his knowledge with him. Fortunato brings Montresor home and woos Annabel. When Montresor discovers that his wife is having a love affair with Fortunato, he plots an evil scheme to seek revenge. "The Black Cat" is the best segment of this trilogy. This story has humor and Peter Lorre's performance is very funny. The conclusion is hilarious with the cat's meow. My vote is eight. (3) "The Case of M. Valdemar": The wealthy Ernest Valdemar (Vincent Price) is terminal feeling great pain. He hires the hypnotizer Carmichael (Basil Rathbone) to relief his pain and asks his beloved wife Helene (Debra Paget) and his Dr. James (David Frankham) to get married to each other after his death. However Carmichael controls his mind and Valdemar dies but his soul stays trapped in his body. Carmichael tells Helene that he let Valdemar go only if she marries him but his attitude brings tragic consequences."The Case of M. Valdemar" is a creepy tale of terror. Debra Paget is very beautiful, the veteran Basil Rathbone is scary with his eerie power and the conclusion is great. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Muralhas do Pavor" ("Wall of Terror")

There are three tales of terror, each based on a story by Poe. In the first, a gloomy adaptation of "Morella", which has always sounded as much to me like an Italian cheese as a Poe title, Vincent Price lives in a cobweb-ridden castle, alone except for one servant with whom he exchanges few words, except, "Get out." He receives an unannounced visit from the beautiful daughter he sent away as a child, blaming her for the death of her mother in childbirth. Price sulks and his tall figure flaps around in an open dressing gown until finally he is provoked into strangling his own daughter, at which point the dead body of his wife, which he has carefully preserved, insinuates itself to a dusty gray life and -- and then I don't know what happened next, officer. I think Morella -- that is, the once-dead wife, strangles Price, but I'm not sure because, by this time, my usually normal head had an overheated merry-go-round inside it.Tale Number Two, "The Black Cat," is obviously meant as a traditional comic interlude because the central figure is the aging, blubbery, drunken, pop-eyed Peter Lorre. Now, I can't remember the original stories too well because it's been years since I've read them. But I think this one is what they call a "pastiche." Because I think I remember "The Black Cat," and in that one the dead body is buried under the floorboards, isn't it? The dead body gets walled up in the basement in "The Cask of the Amontillado." Peter Lorre doesn't do a drunk very well. It requires a certain finesse to undertake the role, which my Uncle Mort demonstrated to perfection. Lorre is obnoxious and mean, but Vincent Price is quite good as the dead body.The last tale is a souped-up version of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," in which a "mesmerist" (Basil Rathbone) hypnotizes his patient, Price, at the moment of death and keeps him in a state of suspended trance. Price closes his eyes and reports that he is now dead. In the original, Valdemar is kept in this liminal state for seven months until, finally released, he crumbles into "a seething putrid mass" all at once. In the movie, Rathbone is evil and begins to make the dead Valdemar issue orders to Rathbone's advantage. Ultimately, the dead Price, all gray and red-eyed, as who wouldn't be, climbs out of bed and strangles the terrified Rathbone before crumbling into the seething, putrid, etc.I know Roger Corman operated with a tiny budget and all that, but his work was lurid and commercial too. Twenty years earlier, Val Lewton was working within similar financial strictures over at RKO and producing imaginative and respectable psychological horror stuff. Poe would have been an apt source for dark and carefully-crafted movies. Instead, Corman, like water, like a putrid seething fluid, always seemed to seek the lowest elevation.They didn't entertain me much but these tales must have worked with a lot of people at the time because there were a whole string of them. Boris Karloff was dragged into the stock company. If Corman could have done it, he'd have hypnotize Bela Lugosi's corpse and brought it back to life to play a few more parts. The end product was deliberate self parody which was no funnier than the first, serious productions.