therosenpants
I'm really not sure what people aren't seeing in this film. This is truly a magnificent film, the best of the Corman/Price collaborations. The atmosphere, visuals, and even the characters yield a fantastic experience from beginning to end. Some have said only Price's performance is worth anything, but I found Sheppard, Francis and Johnston to be just as convincing (Westbrook seemed the only weak link, but not enough to detract). Sheppard's coolness adds to the personality of her character-- Rowena is poised, curious, iron-willed and unpretentious. A great departure from normal damsels trapped in a technicolor horror.And Vincent Price as the tortured Verden is a revelation. Remarkable in the way one pities his character, who has such depth that we are fully immersed in his world, from the obsession with Egyptian artifacts to the familiarity with his kitchen, to the loneliness that compels him to rest in cobwebs and darkness. His happiness on marrying Rowena and honeymooning presents such a stark contrast to his solitary life that one wishes they would have left the constrictive hold of the house and Abbey before they even wed.Particular standouts include the dreamy exploration of Rome and Stonehenge, the actual dream sequence that foretells Rowena's fate (the puppet cat's shadow being the only laughably bad effect in the film), but the best is easily Rowena's journey to the bell tower. Price's narration here is brilliantly magnified by Corman's camera work, highlighting how similar--and in some cases dissimilar-- Rowena and Ligeia are.I haven't read the source Poe story, but I'm going to have to now. This film is truly a work of art that lives up to the themes Poe wrote about the tragedy of the human condition. Like Rowena and supposedly Ligeia, some people walk through the darkness of life like a solitary candle, brightening all around it. But without darkness, we cannot have that light to guide us, so our goodness would be worthless without the potential for evil, even within ourselves. I really admire how this film subtly captures this idea, and Poe would be proud.
O2D
I have no interest in classic literature so I don't know much about Edgar Allan Poe.After watching this, I can confidently say he wasn't much of a writer.I remember reading The Tell Tale Heart and this story is weirdly similar.So some people are on a fox hunt and of course the only female gets separated from the group.She falls off her horse onto a grave and then screams and faints when she sees Vincent Price.One of the men hears her scream and comes to see what happened and it turns out that he knows Price and thought the property he lived on was long abandoned(even though Price has several employees and a constant stream of visitors).The woman wakes up and while Price carries her inside he tells her that he "lives at night" even though it is currently day time and he is up during the day for the rest of the movie.Less than five minutes after fainting at the site of Price, the woman wants to marry him.Ugh.There's a black cat that you will quickly realize is not just a cat.It's in the castle all the time and minutes after telling a servant to kill it, Price calls it a stray.The woman says Price is morose and he later says it too but I think they meant to say verbose because this guy will not shut up.To top it all off, the end was extremely predictable.Three stars.
tomgillespie2002
The films that immediately come to mind when considering Roger Corman's considerable cycle of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations are undoubtedly titles such as The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) and The Pit and The Pendulum (1961), both starring Vincent Price as a man psychologically torn by a past event or his looming fate, and both featuring the Gothic, set-based atmosphere that is now so celebrated by movie fans. The Tomb of Ligeia may be one of Martin Scorsese's all- time favourite horror movies, but it has been strangely, and unfairly, overlooked in the horror cannon.Price once again plays a man, Verden Fell, haunted by the death of his wife. While out fox-hunting one day, the young and boisterous Lady Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd) comes across Verden in a graveyard, apparently looming over the grave of his wife, the mysterious Ligeia, and forced to wear protective glasses due to his failing eye sight. Rowena takes pity on him, and witnesses his psychological torment first hand, which is mainly due to the presence of a threatening cat and the idea that his dead wife is haunting him from the grave. The two eventually marry, but Rowena finds herself the subject of increasingly strange goings-on.Ligeia is noticeably different to the other entries into the Corman- Poe cycle, mainly due to it's use of exterior filming. While this causes it to lose the claustrophobic, and beautiful, sets of the likes of Usher and Pendulum, it makes for a spookier atmosphere. Price is excellent as always, as is Shepherd, but the blooming romance between their two characters suffers from a distinct lack of chemistry and the niggling problem of the glaring age-gap. However, Ligeia was written by Chinatown (1974) scribe and all-round Hollywood titan Robert Towne, so the absorbing dialogue more than makes up for the awkwardness between the two leads. Certainly a different experience, but Ligeia is up there with the very best of Corman's output.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com
ackstasis
Roger Corman is often celebrated for his economies, but nobody ever told me that he was also a wonderful cinematic craftsman. 'The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)' is my second Corman film (after the throwaway cheapie 'The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)'), and I'm now intrigued by the prospect of seeing his other Edgar Allan Poe-inspired creations. Horror maestro Vincent Price stars as Verden Fell, a wealthy widower who becomes obsessed by the possibility that his deceased wife somehow survives. Inexplicably drawn to Verden's sinister charms, the lovely Lady Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd) agrees to marry him. However, on their wedding night, she is tormented by the memory of her predecessor, who seemingly takes the form of an ominous black cat. Though one could argue that nothing much happens in this film, it is nevertheless exceedingly dense with atmosphere, almost stiflingly so, every frame an overwhelming banquet of garish colours. The darkness of the nighttime is vividly punctuated by the gleaming scarlet of blood, hellish yellow flames, and an invisible black enemy that skulks in the shadows.While I don't expect that 'The Tomb of Ligeia' stays particularly close to the original story, the screenplay from Robert Towne (later to write 'Chinatown (1974)') emulates the gloomy Gothic overtones of classic Poe. Discomfort is gleaned, not only from the dialogue, but the silences between words. Not that Verden Fell is not given his fair share of dialogue; the film is so apparently entranced by the dark, charismatic tones of Price's voice that he often breaks off into superb, meandering monologues that give voice to the obvious. Not that the audience is complaining, of course – the way Price presents himself to the camera, with complete and utter conviction, is mesmerising. While the film, of course, owes a debt to Poe's literature, it is also an expansion of the Gothic melodrama sub-genre of the 1940s. Consider Hitchcock's 'Rebecca (1940),' in which young innocent Joan Fontaine is plagued by the "ghost" of her husband's previous wife; or Mankiewicz's 'Dragonwyck (1946),' which finds Gene Tierney harassed by her mentally deranged husband – played, appropriately, by Vincent Price.
AD
