The Tomb of Ligeia (1964), the eighth and final film in Roger Corman’s cycle of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, is considered by many the best (partisans tend to split over this and The Masque of the Red Death, 1963).
It is certainly the most sophisticated, with rich performances by Vincent Price and British actress Elizabeth Shepherd. Price is both haunted protagonist and Gothic romantic leading man (a first in the series) as widower Verden Fell, still mourning the death of his beloved Lady Ligeia. “I live at night,” he explains, and wears shaded glasses in the bright light.
Shepherd brings a zest for life to the role of Rowena Trevanion, whose fascination with Verdan’s self-imposed exile turns to romance. Once she draws him out of the haunted manor and into the world for their honeymoon, that shadow of gloom is lifted and he can even discard the glasses. Once back in the abbey, however, the ghost of Lady Ligeia reasserts her control. Or so it seems after Verden offers a demonstration of hypnosis and Ligeia takes over Rowena for a chilling instant while she’s under the spell.
The Tomb of Ligeia is the only one of Corman’s Poe films to shoot location exteriors (Corman used studio sets entirely for previous films to create a rarified unreality, he says, as befitting his interest in psychology and the unconscious in relation to horror). The ruins he uses for Fell’s abbey home are astoundingly beautiful, the bleached bone remains of a fallen castle behind his stone manor, the dead of the past haunting the living of the present.
Fittingly, it is also the most psychologically rooted of Corman’s Poe adaptations, though the revelations of the finale do not fully explain the black cat who seems to act as Ligeia’s familiar in the abbey, or Rowena’s brief possession by Ligeia. The intelligent script by future Oscar-winner Robert Towne and Corman’s moody direction melds the explicable and the supernatural very nicely in a tale that is never simply one or the other.
John Westbrook, Derek Francis, Oliver Johnston, and Richard Vernon costar.
Streams for a limited time on Criterion Channel
Also on Blu-ray and DVD and on SVOD through Amazon Video, iTunes, GooglePlay, Vudu and/or other services. Availability may vary by service.
The Tomb of Ligeia [Blu-ray]
The Vincent Price Collection II (House on Haunted Hill, The Return of the Fly, The Comedy of Terrors, The Raven, The Last Man on Earth, Tomb of Ligeia & Dr. Phibes Rises Again) [Blu-ray]
The Tomb of Ligeia / An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe [DVD]
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On DVD from MGM and Blu-ray from Shout! Factory. Both feature commentary by Roger Corman while the Blu-ray adds commentary recorded for this release by actress Elizabeth Shepherd, and an archival video introduction and afterward by Vincent Price, originally taped for a public TV horror series decades ago, plus a gallery of stills and a trailer.
