the film MANIAC by Dwain Esper borrowed heavily from many Poe stories in its tale of a murdered scientist and the madman who tries to step into his shoes to cover the crime. A neighbor’s cat proves to be the murderer’s downfall when it alerts the police to the location of the dead body. In AIP’s TALES OF TERROR (1962), “The Black Cat” was adapted again, but this time much more faithfully to the original story, with Peter Lorre as a man who is outed for murder by a cat after killing his wife’s suitor, played by Vincent Price, and burying him in a wall. This would be director Roger Corman’s fourth Poe-inspired film. Lorre’s iconic persona brings the paranoia and guilt that permeated Poe’s story to vivid life on screen. Italian horror icon Lucio Fulci took a turn adapting THE BLACK CAT in 1981, as did Dario Argento in the 1990 anthology TWO EVIL EYES. More recently, in 2007, during the second season of the MASTERS OF HORROR cable TV series, director Stuart Gordon reunited with his RE-ANIMATOR star Jeffrey Combs in THE BLACK CAT, in which Combs plays Poe in search for inspiration while tormented by a black cat. “The Cask of Amontillado” has not been adapted directly, but
themes of the story have found their way into many a film. The aforementioned TALES OF TERROR borrows Montressor and Fortunato as the main characters of THE BLACK CAT in the Corman classic. And TV’s HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET takes details from the story when the team tracks a Poe-themed killer who buries his victim in a wall. “Amontillado” is also one of the short stories adapted in 2006’s NIGHTMARES FROM THE MIND OF POE, along with “The Premature Burial” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. The theme of being buried alive is common in Poe’s work.
1962’s THE PREMATURE BURIAL is another Roger Corman- directed classic, starring Ray Milland, that deals with the phobia of being buried alive, which was quite a common fear in Poe’s day and age. In the 1935 film THE CRIME OF DR. CRESPI, a doctor gives a man a drug that induces a coma-like stare, resulting in his burial. Frank Darabont’s first film, BURIED ALIVE, is heavily influenced by Poe’s classic, as is Fred Olen Ray’s HAUNTING FEAR (1991) starring Brinke Stevens. The Hayden Christensen/ Jessica Alba thriller AWAKE (2007), in which Christensen is conscious after being given anesthetic, and the Ryan Reynolds
“Do you expect me to talk?” “No, Mr. Barnard. I expect you to die!” Vincent Price in THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.
“Marry you? No, I said I wanted to BURY you!”
Corman’s PREMATURE BURIAL.
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