Another of the Roger Corman/Vincent Price films based VERY loosely on three Edgar Allan Poe tales.

The first is "Morella" where a dying girl comes to visit her father (Price) and find out why he abandoned her as a child. It has to do with her mother (Morella) and her death. Well-done but it doesn't make a lot of sense.

"The Black Cat" is about a man (Peter Lorre) finding out his wife is cheating on him with someone else (Price). It's pretty good but Lorre's acting turns it into a comedy more than a horror story.

"The Case of M. Valdemar" has an evil mesmerist (Basil Rathbone) keeping a man's spirit alive while his body wastes away. Well-done with a pretty gruesome ending.

Basically this a good anthology of horror stories. They're well-produced, well-acted and written. Just don't expect them to be anything like the Poe tales (especially "Morella"). GREAT liberties have been taken with the stories--they just use them as a starting point and build on it.

Also try to see it letter-boxed--the pan and scan TV version is pretty terrible.

I give it a 7.

Roger Corman teamed up with Vincent Price, director and star, to produce two thirds of a good trilogy inspired by tales from Edgar Allan Poe. Sad that it couldn't have been a horror trifecta.

The first and weakest of the stories is Morella where Price plays a distraught father who has never gotten over the death of his wife, weakened from childbirth and who lives like a male version of Dicken's Miss Havasham. His daughter Leona Gage comes to visit and finds Price drunk and dissolute and the rotting corpse of her mother still in her bed. From there it got worse and made no sense at all to me when it was over.

Things picked up considerably with The Black Cat, a harmless and playful animal not unlike my own cat Socks who is loved by its owner Joyce Jameson and hated by her husband a drunken and abusive lout played by Peter Lorre. On one night on one of his binges Lorre makes a friend in wine gourmet Vincent Price and Jameson makes a better friend in Price. Lorre takes his vengeance out, but in this one that Black Cat has the last word. This one is a very clever black comedy doing credit to all three players.

Finally The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar are a study in just what happens when one is hypnotized at the very moment one passes from life on earth. Vincent Price is the dying man who hypnotist Basil Rathbone experiments on. But Rathbone has some real base ulterior motives as he wants to possess Price's widow Debra Paget. This last tale shows Corman at his best as a director of both players and of atmosphere.

Two out of three ain't bad for Corman and Price. Fans of both director and star want to earmark this film.

I saw Tales of Terror because I'm a fan of Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone and I like Peter Lorre too. I found the film very enjoyable if not a masterpiece. As a matter of fact two thirds of the movie is great, but I did find one segment lacking. That segment was Morella. It is not terrible by all means, it does have the best costume and set design of the film- though the whole of Tales of Terror is very handsomely mounted- and Vincent Price is great as ever in a role that suits him to the bone. But the story is all over the place and doesn't make that much sense, Leona Gage is bland in the title role and the segment is much too rushed so we don't feel much of the atmosphere. The Black Cat fares much better though, again it looks spookily sumptuous, and the writing is broadly droll, while the story still evokes a chilling atmosphere. Price is excellent once again, and Peter Lorre- these two are very memorable together- is in excellent scene-stealing form. The best of the three is The Case of Mr Valdemar, the closest in spirit to Poe's stories(with Morella being the loosest) and the most chillingly atmospheric, especially at the end. The story and writing convey the wittiness, intelligence and horror of Poe's writing very well, while Price gives his best performance of the three segments again in a role that really plays to his strengths and very rarely will you see Basil Rathbone as evil as he is here. Overall, a spooky, handsomely mounted and fun movie that just falls short of being a masterpiece. 8/10 Bethany Cox