Edgar Allan Poe Movies
- 2009
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Seven students participating in an experiment designed to eliminate the sensation of pain begin to question the validity of the study after arriving at a remote institute and realizing that their numbers are dwindling fast. Greeted at the institute by eccentric scientist JB Divay, the students view their host's fascination with hypnosis, clocks, and cactuses as simple personality quirks. Before long, however, the frightened lab rats discover that Divay is far from the harmless crackpot she first appeared to be. Later, when one of the students finds his boyfriend strapped to a table beneath a giant pendulum, he must race to prevent Divay from finishing her final experiment. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Loriele New, Stephen Hansen, (more)
Josh Lucas stars as a man whose heart transplant leads him on a frenzied journey to find the killer of his heart's previous owner before its past catches up to him in this retooling of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale. Directors Tony and Ridley Scott produce the Scott Free production being helmed by cable TV veteran Michael Cuesta. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi
- Starring:
- Josh Lucas, Lena Headey, (more)
Wes Bentley, Eric Roberts, and Michael Madsen headline first-time feature filmmaker Michael Straininger's story of a successful writer and scholar who falls under the spell of a bewitching seductress on an obsessive quest for immortality. Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's acclaimed short story of the same name, Ligeia tells the story of Jonathan Merrick (Bentley), a respected academic engaged to the beautiful Rowena (Kaitlin Doubleday), but unable to resist the advances of ravishing siren Ligeia (Sofya Skya). Ligeia suffers from a terminal illness, and in order to cheat death she extracts the souls of others. After tricking Jonathan into supporting her ghoulish endeavor, Ligeia gradually draws him into her mysterious world of darkness. Forsaking his beloved Rowena, Jonathan joins Ligeia in her lavish manor at the edge of the Black Sea. There, Ligeia's amaranthine presence slowly erodes the fragile psyche of her prisoner Jonathan, forever cursed to be the victim of his own undying lust. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Wes Bentley, Kaitlin Doubleday, (more)
A woman is thrust into a world where everything is subtly unfamiliar in this edgy thriller from writer and director Sean Ellis. Gina McVay (Lena Headey) is a radiologist who is enjoying dinner one evening with her family and her boyfriend Stefan (Melvil Poupaud) when a mirror shatters for no apparent reason. After a few moments, no one thinks much of it, but the next day Gina is leaving work and she sees something even more troubling -- a woman who looks just like her, driving a car identical to her own. Curious, Gina sneaks into the doppelganger's apartment and sees a photo of herself and her father in the hallway. Seriously rattled, Gina runs out and drives away, only to get in an accident that lands her in the hospital. After she's released, Gina asks Stefan if she can stay with him, but while he looks the same, his personality and behavior are quite different from the way she remembers him, and she begins having vivid nightmares which become all the more terrifying when the same horrific images begin popping up in her waking hours. The Broken received its American premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lena Headey, Ulrich Thomsen, (more)
A masked killer crashes a lavish masquerade party in director David DeCoteau's modern updating of Edgar Allan Poe's classic tale. It's time for the biggest gay party of the year; unfortunately the host has chosen the site of the infamous Ravenswood Massacre to stage his blowout gala. Now, as the guests roll in for a rollicking evening of debauchery and excess, the body count begins to multiply. With each passing hour more victims turn up, leaving the frightened survivors to wonder who will die next. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- 2004
Curtis Harrington, a perennial cult figure who made such atmospheric low-budget horror films as Night Tide, Queen of Blood, and Games, both stars in and directs this adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher. Harrington plays Roderick Usher, a poet who lives in his family's decaying mansion along with his twin sister, Madeline. As a young writer comes to visit the aging poet, the close bond between Roderick and Madeline becomes obvious, and when the sister dies while celebrating her birthday, Roderick quickly has her buried. But is Madeline truly dead? And what has become of her brother? Usher marked the second time Harrington adapted Poe's tale for the screen, having directed an amateur film based on the story when he was a teenager. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Curtis Harrington
Science allows a man to cheat death and continue to be a thorn in the side of his family in this dark comedy. Mr. Valdemar (Howard Hesseman) is a wealthy but ill-manned man who is elderly and in poor health. Knowing he doesn't have long to live, Valdemar agrees to take part in an experiment by Dr. Pretory (Jason Carter), an eccentric hypnotist. Pretory wants to discover what happens to a man if he is under hypnosis at the point of death, and so as Valdemar is taking his last few breaths, Pretory puts him in a deep trance. Hovering somewhere between death and life, Valdemar is able to describe to world beyond our own to Pretory and his family; however, cheating death isn't making Valdemar any easier to get along with, and he continues to cause trouble for his daughter, Daisy (Jessica Capshaw), and her significant other, Benjamin (Neil Patrick Harris), especially since you can't inherit the estate of a man who isn't entirely dead. The Mesmerist was based on the short story The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe, which was brought to the screen in less comical form as part of Roger Corman's 1962 horror omnibus Tales of Terror. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Edgar Allan Poe's timeless tale of murder and madness arrives onscreen in filmmaker Scott Mansfield's loyal adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart. Driven to madness and compelled to take the life of his elderly, bedridden charge, a man seeking peace and quiet finds that death is only the beginning of his terror and there is no escape from the sound of the world turning. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- 1997
- R
Edgar Lynden is a prison hospital doctor who conducts some unauthorized and certainly unethical medical experiments in company with his ruthless paramour, Dr. Patricia Morella. He has a twisted relationship with her, which becomes macabre when, as she is comatose and dying from a rare degenerative disease, he implants an embryo cloned from her DNA into her womb. The embryo grows up to become Sarah Lynden, Dr. Morella's spitting image, who has psychic powers and an exaggerated form of her mother's ruthlessness. From childhood onward, anyone who is inconvenient to her has died or suffered horribly. Eventually, her adoptive father realizes the extent of his errors. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- Angela Jones, Nicholas Guest, (more)
- 1991
- R
A contemporary version of the masterpiece by Edgar Allan Poe follows a photographer (Michelle McBride) as she spies on a soap-opera star at a party in Bavaria. She must solve the crimes when several guests are murdered by someone in a skull mask and red coat. ~ John Bush, Rovi
- 1991
- R
Only loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe's classic short story, this horror film was filmed on location in a spooky Italian castle and tells the convoluted story of a mad priest who devises exquisitely painful ways of getting his victims to confess to dabbling in witchcraft. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lance Henriksen, Rona de Ricci, (more)
Exploitation king Fred Olen Ray bulldozes Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Premature Burial" in this sleazy direct-to-video thriller. B-movie babe Brinke Stevens stars as an heiress tormented night and day by the ever-present phobia of being buried alive. Thanks to hypnotic past-life regression sessions under the guidance of New Age therapist Karen Black, she learns that she was indeed buried alive in a previous existence. Despite her relief at this discovery, Stevens' money-hungry husband (Jay Richardson) still goes through with his plan to place her in a sealed box while she sleeps, hoping it will cause her to die of fright. Instead, she goes completely berserk, breaking free and coming after him with a knife. Though no cheaper than Roger Corman's early forays into Poe territory, this incoherent and sex-laden mess more closely resembles recent exploitation product from Corman's Concorde-New Horizons direct-to-video outfit, and makes 1962's The Premature Burial seem masterful by comparison. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
- Starring:
- Jan-Michael Vincent, Brinke Stevens, (more)
Two well-known directors each adapt stories by Edgar Allen Poe in this horror drama. George Romero's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" tells how the wife of an elderly, wealthy man and her lover--who also happens to be the husband's private physician--scheme to control his assets. Dying before they can carry out their plans, his soul is caught between life and death while they freeze the body to finish their work. In the Dario Argento-directed "The Black Cat" a crime photographer, known for his photos' gruesome content, kills his girlfriend's titular pet and then his girlfriend. Soon he gets a good look at what he's done. ~ Kristie Hassen, Rovi
- Starring:
- Adrienne Barbeau, E.G. Marshall, (more)
- 1990
Produced for cable TV, this pedestrian thriller (also known as Till Death Do Us Part) purports to be a riff on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Premature Burial" but actually bears more of a resemblance to Diabolique. It stars Tim Matheson as a cheated-upon husband who can't stay down after his wife's (Jennifer Jason Leigh) unsuccessful attempt to poison him results in his being buried alive. The film's one real moment of horror comes in a claustrophobic sequence where Matheson desperately claws his way out of his coffin. The story then settles into a standard revenge motif, capped with an admittedly potent payoff that, though intriguing, is probably not as shocking as the filmmakers had intended. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tim Matheson
- 1990
- R
One of a few abortive attempts by B-movie legend Roger Corman to recapture the questionable glory of his 60s Edgar Allan Poe films as well as his 70s sexploitation romps, this is definitely the least entertaining of the lot. Taking massive liberties with Poe's tale, the plot involves lovely young Lenora (Nicole Eggert) being possessed by the ghost of her mother (Eggert again), who was tortured and crucified as a witch when Lenora was an infant. After a series of flashbacks, it is also revealed that Morella had intended to sacrifice her child as part of a Satanic ritual designed to give her eternal life. Lenora's creepy governess Mrs. Deveroux (Lana Clarkson) is revealed as Morella's partner in crime, as she conspires to make Lenora's possession complete -- just in time for her to collect a sizable trust on her 18th birthday. Conceived primarily as softcore exploitation, this makes Corman's earlier bastardizations of Poe's works seem positively inspired by comparison. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
- Starring:
- David McCallum, Nicole Eggert, (more)
- 1989
- R
Although this bloody, relentlessly weird South African production purports to be a modern-day treatment of the works of Edgar Allan Poe (most promotional materials list the author's name above the title), it actually bears so little relation to Poe's writing that it makes Roger Corman's Poe "adaptations" seem meticulously loyal by comparison. The story involves a young psychologist whose arrival at the creepy Ravenscroft Institute for troubled girls is followed by the disappearance of several students. Tormented by a series of grotesque nightmares involving a deranged killer, the heroine eventually learns of the bizarre goings-on within the school's hallowed halls. Some oddball touches and outlandish performances from Robert Vaughn and Donald Pleasence (in a bad wig) make this film just campy enough to be entertaining. Alert viewers can spot John Carradine in his final role. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
- 1989
- R
A remake of Roger Corman's 1964 adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe tale was produced by Corman but directed by Larry Brand. Its the story of a medieval prince (Adrian Paul) and his attempt to avoid a vicious plague among the populace. ~ John Bush, Rovi
- Starring:
- Patrick Macnee, Adrian Paul, (more)
- 1989
- R
Without a doubt the weirdest adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe tale in recent memory, this lurid production features a raging, leering Oliver Reed as Roderick Usher, who treats his nephew (Rufus Swart) and the man's bride-to-be (Romy Windsor) to some genuine family hospitality by raping her and burying him alive. It seems Roderick intends to sire a child with the poor girl in order to continue the Usher bloodline -- apparently oblivious to the fact that her marriage to his nephew would have accomplished the same thing. As if Reed's lecherous advances weren't enough, we are presented with a one-armed Donald Pleasence, who likes to threaten our heroine with a power drill attached to his stump! This film is not only an abomination to the memory of the great author, but a sick joke by comparison with Roger Corman's excellent 1960 adaptation. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
Edgar Allan Poe's classic 1841 detective story Murders in the Rue Morgue was adapted for television by David Epstein. Two women--a mother and a daughter--are brutally killed in their tiny Paris apartment. There are no eyewitnesses, and the earwitnesses are wildly contradictory. The evidence points to a man of superhuman strength: perhaps it was the girl's jealous fiance. Enter consulting detective C. Auguste Dupin (George C. Scott), who with a methodical application of logic solves the mystery. The younger of the two unfortunate ladies was played by Rebecca De Mornay, still in her ingenue phase. Murders in the Rue Morgue was originally telecast December 7, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1982
A maddened Roderick Usher (Martin Landau) and his dying sister Madeline (Dimitra Arliss) are the only surviving members of the ancient race of the Ushers in this rendition of the classic Edgar Allen Poe tale. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi
Italian goremeister Lucio Fulci applies his characteristic touch to the Edgar Allan Poe tale (of which very little remains intact) to tell the story of a deranged, wheelchair-bound English psychic (Patrick Magee) who can record the voices of the dead on tape, and apparently possesses the ability to channel evil spirits into the body of his cat -- which he then commands to take vengeance on his enemies. When a freelance crime photographer (Mimsy Farmer) notices traces of feline claw-marks on the bodies of accident victims, her own investigations eventually lead her to Magee's naughty kitty... leading to a confusing climax wherein it is learned (sort of) who's really in charge. Remarkably restrained horror from the man behind such flesh-rending epics as Zombie and The Gates of Hell, this is also nearly incomprehensible, possessing a nightmarish lack of cohesion that is more irritating than frightening. In fact, the most horrifying thing about this film is Fulci's aggressive tendency to shoot super-tight widescreen close-ups of Magee's eyes and nose. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi
- Starring:
- Patrick Magee, Mimsy Farmer, (more)
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