The Haunted Palace

One of the horror films Roger Corman made in the 1960s. Charles arrives in a town to see the mansion he has inherited. The townspeople do not want him: a hundred and fifty years earlier a man with the same face lived there and was burned for sorcery. Before he died he cursed the town. As Charles settles into the house he begins to change. What is interesting is the source. Corman was making Edgar Allan Poe adaptations one after another in that period, and this one carries the title of a Poe poem. But the story is not Poe's; it comes from a novel by H. P. Lovecraft. So the first major Lovecraft adaptation in film history was made under Poe's name. Vincent Price plays both Charles and his ancestor of a hundred and fifty years before. Lon Chaney Jr. plays the servant of the house. It was shot in the studio and some of the sets were left over from Corman's earlier films, the known production method of the period. A typical example of its kind for anyone who likes classic horror and Corman's Poe series. For a viewer expecting a Lovecraft adaptation, the film uses the source only partly and pulls it towards the gothic template.