The Tell-Tale Heart - Adaptations

Adaptations

• The earliest acknowledged adaptation of "The Tell-Tale Heart" was in a 1928 silent film of the same name directed by Leon Shamroy and starring Otto Matieson and Darvas. It stayed faithful to the original tale, though future television and film adaptations often expanded the short story to full-length feature films.
• A 1941 live-action adaptation starred Joseph Schildkraut and was the directorial debut of Jules Dassin.
• A 1953 animated short film produced by United Productions of America and narrated by James Mason is included among the list of films preserved in the United States National Film Registry.
• Also in 1953, a "Variation" on "The Tell-Tale Heart" entitled "Sleep No More," by Gaines and Feldstein, appeared.
• A 1960 film adaptation, The Tell-Tale Heart, adds a love triangle to the story.
• A 1971 film adaptation directed by Steve Carver, and starring Sam Jaffe as the old man.
• The film Nightmares from the Mind of Poe (2006) adapts "The Tell-Tale Heart" along with "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Premature Burial" and "The Raven".
• The Radio Tales series produced the drama The Tell-Tale Heart for National Public Radio. The story was performed by Winifred Phillips along with music composed by her.
• The Canadian radio program Nightfall presented an adaptation on August 1, 1980.
• A 2009 thriller film, Tell-Tale, produced by Ridley Scott and Tony Scott, credits Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" as the basis for the story of a man being haunted by his donor's memories, after a heart transplant.
• In the 1972 film An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe, four of Poe's short stories are recited by Vincent Price in front of a live audience, including "The Tell-Tale Heart".
• Another adaption was by Steven Berkoff in 1991, and was broadcast on British television. This adaptation was originally presented on British TV as part of the acclaimed series "Without Walls". This version was later broadcast in the United States on the cable channel BRAVO as part of the Texaco Performing Arts series.
• A musical adaptation performed by The Alan Parsons Project was released on their 1976 debut album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and was later covered by Slough Feg for their 2010 album, The Animal Spirits.
• Another musical adaptation, entitled "Dark Chilling Heartbeat", was performed by Deceased on their 2000 album Supernatural Addiction.
• Yet another musical adaptaion was done by The Insane Clown Posse on their album The Riddle Box, entitled "Ol' Evil Eye", which covers the story of a young man determined to kill "old man Wille on the hilltop" because of his grotesque left eye, and is interspersed with samples from an audio recording of a reading of the original short story.
• Ryan Connolly's 2012 short film, TELL, was inspired and loosely based upon the short story.
• V.H.Belvadi's 2012 short film, Telltale, credits Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart" as its inspiration and borrows several lines as a nod to the original work.