THE TOMB OF LIGEIA: Elizabeth Shepherd finds herself inexplicably drawn to Price, playing the morbid resident of a neighboring abbey.


presentation is easily the most eye-popping in the VINCENT PRICE COLLECTION (where it shares a disc with PIT AND THE PENDULUM), benefiting from the colorful costume design, the rich set deco- rations and the resplendent cinematography of Nicolas Roeg. This film was made during a peak in British film production and, if you compare a film like this to something as opulently setbound as the US-shot THE RAVEN, there is something consider- ably more audacious, striking and alive at work here. There are, however, faults with the source element— the image (intended to be shown on a curved screen) visibly bows in places, there are signs of unrepaired damage at 41:56 and 80:23, and the transfer ap- pears to be too bright, even exposing the outline of a matte element at 56:34.


The Iowa PBS wrap-arounds are included here, and Steve Haberman repays his admiration for the film with a scrupulously researched commentary that may be his best in these sets. While not a scene- specific commentary, for the most part, it benefits greatly from access to Beaumont and Campbell’s respective script drafts, of which a meticulous com- parison is offered, as well as detailed information about why the film was shot at Elstree and the con- ditions of that arrangement. Also pleasing is the attention he pays to the supporting players, like Skip Martin’s Hop Toad and John Westbrook’s Red Death. There is no Corman commentary for this title, but he is interviewed on-camera about the film in an 18m 52s featurette carried over from a 2002 MGM DVD release. There is also a theatrical trailer (2m 12s, which has been expunged of all onscreen hyperbole and voice-over narration) and a stills and poster gallery.


30


THE TOMB OF LIGEIA 1965, Scream Factory, 81m 43s Arrow Video, 81m 42s


The Robert Towne-scripted THE TOMB OF


LIGEIA, also filmed in England but at Shepperton Studios and on location, is one of only two real “A” titles in THE VINCENT PRICE COLLECTION II; it


was the last of Roger Corman’s Poe pictures for AIP and it is a horror film whose tone is almost uniquely romantic and literary. In it, the young and spirited Lady Rowena Trevanyan (Elizabeth Shep- herd) makes the chance acquaintance of her neigh- bor, Verden Fell (Vincent Price), a lonely widower who resides with a manservant in a crumbling ab- bey, so withdrawn from life that he cannot bear the stabbings of sunlight. Rowena becomes inexplica- bly drawn to Verden and they marry, but immedi- ately upon returning to the abbey from their honeymoon, she finds herself in a life-and-death struggle for her husband’s soul with his late wife Ligeia (also Shepherd), a mistress of the Black Arts who hypnotically enslaved him prior to her death. While the upgrade to 1080p certainly enhances the dimensionality of Arthur Grant’s deep focus 2.35:1 photography, Scream Factory’s Blu-ray pre- sentation unfortunately mutes the film’s color to naturalistic levels not in keeping with its original 35mm look. This is not insignificant because the film is thoroughly invested with psychological uses of color. Here the all-important reds (shared by Rowena’s hair, the fox, and the flowers at Ligeia’s gravesite) have a flat, slightly orange look and not even the stained glass panels pop as they did on previous laserdisc and DVD releases.


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