The Edgar Allan Poe Adaptations
Corman's greatest acclaim as a director came with his Edgar Allan Poe cycle released between 1959 and 1964. Based on the works of Poe, made through American International Pictures, and mostly in collaboration with writer/scenarist Richard Matheson, the series of eight films comprises House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Premature Burial (1962), Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven (1963), The Haunted Palace (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964), and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964). All but The Premature Burial starred Vincent Price. Other Poe films got made at AIP in the late 1960s and early 1970s directed by other filmmakers with Price in starring roles.
Corman also worked with set designer Daniel Haller and cinematographer Floyd Crosby on the series. Others who joined him include cinematographer (on Masque), writers Robert Towne and Charles Beaumont, and actors Ray Milland, Basil Rathbone, Hazel Court, Barbara Steele, Debra Paget, and Peter Lorre. After The Raven was completed, Corman reportedly realized that he still had some shooting days left before the sets were torn down and so made another film, The Terror (1963), on the spot with the remaining cast, crew and sets.
Read more about this topic: Roger Corman
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“Come Vitus, are we men, or are we children? Of what use are all these melodramatic gestures? You say your soul was killed, and that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmaros fifteen years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead?”
—Peter Ruric, and Edgar G. Ulmer. Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff)
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
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“That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)