The Haunted Palace

The Haunted Palace (1963)

Dir Roger Corman

Written by Charles Beaumont, "from the poem by Edgar Allen [sic] Poe and a story by H.P. Lovecraft.”

Starring Vincent Price, Debra Paget, Frank Maxwell, Lon Chaney Jr.

THE HAUNTED PALACE is one of the less faithful of Roger Corman's Poe adaptations, in the sense that it’s actually not a Poe adaptation at all: it's an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward(h). The credits actually say “Screenplay by Charles Beaumont, from the poem by Edgar Allen [sic] Poe,” and then add, “and a story by H.P. Lovecraft.” As in Corman's THE RAVEN, Price does read about eight total lines from Poe’s 1839 poem The Haunted Castle, four at the beginning and another four at the end. Plus they changed the home of the villainous Joseph Curwen to a castle instead of a house, as per the title. And I guess you could claim there is a haunting of sorts which occurs there, if you want to stretch the definition of “haunting” to something so broad it has basically no meaning. But come on, in literally every other respect, this is actually a broadly faithful, if somewhat streamlined, version of Lovecraft’s novella, and there’s not a hint of Poe in there. Maybe misspelling Poe’s middle name in the credits was a cry for help.

Anyway, ROGER CORMAN PRESENTS EDGAR ALLAN POE’S H.P. LOVECRAFT’S THE HAUNTED PALACE BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE is vintage Corman, with all the spooky, dry-ice haunted graveyards and gloomy, spartan castle sets you could want. As per Lovecraft’s story, it chronicles the sad case of Charles “Dexter” Ward (Vincent Price, that guy who played Joseph Smith in 1940’s BRIGHAM YOUNG), a mild-mannered modern (1963) dude who has recently inherited a Haunted Castle in the stagnant, dismal villa of Arkham, Massachusetts. You don’t pay Massachusetts taxes on a property like that without wanting to spend at least a little time there, and so Ward and his wife Anne (Debra Paget, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS) decide to move in, only to find that the townspeople are suspicious and hostile to them.

Oh right, their hostility makes sense, now that you mention it, because we saw in the opening that back in 1765, the townspeople lynched the then-occupant of the Not-Yet-Haunted Castle, one Joseph Curwen (Vincent Price, DEAD HEAT), on strong suspicion of being a warlock. And while you hate to endorse mob violence, they might have had a point in this case, inasumuch as Curwen cursed the town and its inhabitants with his last breath, and it seemed to, uh, take. To this very day, the descendant of the original townspeople are saddled with debilitating deformities. So Curwen's subsequent promise to rise from grave and take his revenge carries a little more weight than it otherwise might, and you can imagine the townsfolk are none too pleased when his great-great-grandson, who turns out to be a spitting image of the old wizard right down to being exactly the same age and sporting identical facial hair, shows up at the castle and makes himself at home. And those little physical similarities do not go unnoticed by Joseph Curwen himself, whose evil spirit seems to have taken up residence in a gigantic painting which will serve nicely as a conduit to take possession of his descendant’s mind! Charles himself, alas, has no idea about any of this and no way to prevent it, so he, ah, doesn’t turn out to be much of a character.

This is, at least in broad strokes, exactly the plot Lovecraft had written some 36 years earlier in 1927 (though it was not published until 1941, after his death). It is, apparently, the very first Lovecraft story to ever be adapted for film, (the next would come in 1965 with AIP’s adaptation of The Color Out Of Space as DIE MONSTER DIE!) and even though Lovecraft was not yet a marquee name in the mainstream, it's far more faithful than most of the trash that would follow it. The script by Charles Beaumont (who worked on PREMATURE BURIAL and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH from Corman’s “Poe Cycle,” among his other work in a busy and influential career) heroically doesn’t shy away from the classic Lovecraftian craziness, though he uses a light touch; Curwen even owns a copy of the Necronomicon, and both Cthulu and Yog-Sothoth get name-checked, though the former doesn’t even appear in the story if memory serves (maybe it’s from the Poe poem?). But despite the much-appreciated color that brings, the tone of the story is unmistakably rather dour; it is, after all, essentially the tale of a mild-mannered guy who gets his life stolen from him by a sinister magician for no real reason other than bad luck.

Bleak nihilism doesn’t exactly play to the strengths of either Corman or Price, and it’s a colder, meaner movie than their usual fare, with a colder, meaner Price in one of his more hissably villainous turns. You could fairly argue it’s less fun –and certainly less colorful-- than the other films in the, ah, "Poe" series, but it also maybe hits a little harder; Corman’s corny B-movie effusiveness isn’t a great fit for the material, but Price is an actor with sufficient range to make the sadistic Curwen a genuinely threatening figure. I prefer him in deliciously mincing mode, of course, but it’s always nice to be reminded that he was capable of a lot more. In a showy double-role, he carries the movie more or less by himself, aided only by Debra Paget’s affecting commitment to the role of Ward’s distressed wife who suspects her husband is no longer entirely himself.

Which is not to say there’s any shortage of acting talent on hand here, but other than Price they’re not used to their potential; Lon Chaney Jr. (in his sole Corman production, if you can believe it!) and Elisha Cooke Jr. (ROSEMARY’S BABY, THE BIG SLEEP, THE KILLING) are wasted in minor roles, while the bland local doctor (Frank Maxwell, MR. MAJESTYK) eventually wins the musical chairs of who will emerge the protagonist, since it’s certainly not going to be a woman (Paget does fine work, but it’s a thankless, somewhat demeaning role, as I suppose befits a female lead inserted unnaturally into a Lovecraft story).*

Speaking of protagonists, the film’s major problem is doesn’t really have one. As with so many possession stories (from BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB to LORDS OF SALEM), we once again discover that having a main character who is subject to possession leaves the film stranded without any character capable of advancing the plot or experiencing conflict. “Charles” spends the majority of his time on-screen under the influence of Joseph Curwen’s mind whammy, and even if we’re told he’s “fighting” Curwen’s influence, this is a visual medium and just taking it on faith that the main character is taking action we can’t see is not going to cut it. That leaves Curwen as the functional protagonist, since he motives every single narrative action, but since he’s a rather loathsome villain, somebody eventually has to turn up to take action against him. Like I said, this was made in 1963 and it’s adapting Lovecraft, so that hero obviously can’t be the only person who has a meaningful emotional stake in this conflict, since that would be a woman (his wife) and she must inevitably end up a damsel in distress. So, uh, I guess get excited for an unnecessary minor character, who has heretofore only existed as a vehicle for rote exposition, to suddenly turn into an action hero in the final reel. What, do you find that unsatisfying in some way?  

  Lovecraft’s story has the same problem, of course, and in fact it’s something of a feature of his work (see the even more narratively broken The Dunwich Horror and the subsequent film version of the same name). But Lovecraft's oeuvre tends to be structured in a deliberately antiquarian style, often using multiple framing devices and epistolary in a way which gives the stories some unique flavor as written objects, but transitions to more traditionally structured film narrative less than gracefully. At any rate, it's an affectation which doesn't have a very neat parallel in the medium of film, and it's a chief reason why his work has such a dismal track record on-screen. It's fitting, then, that Lovecraft should first make it to the silver screen riding on Poe's coattails, since if there is any other artist more celebrated and influential whose work has suffered more wretchedly in the translation from page to screen, I certainly cannot name them. The problem, I think, is that while both Poe and Lovecraft had a certain gift for clever scenarios and memorable --even iconic-- details, neither one is especially celebrated for tight narrative plotting. They were artists who excelled in cultivating a feeling, not through their stories themselves, necessarily, but through their medium. As clunky and easily parodied as it is, Lovecraft's trademark archaic writing style is part of that feeling, and simply transferring the basic components of his plot to the screen in an otherwise contemporary cinematic style loses something of that feeling. Poe, of course --even less devoted to gripping plotting and far more gifted as a writer-- tends to fare even worse. 

That remains the case here, though at least there are enough other things to enjoy (Price's sadistic charisma, the cyclopian sets and murky, inimitable Corman spook-house atmosphere) that it feels like a less crippling loss. THE HAUNTED CASTLE, as an independent object, is a perfectly enjoyable Corman production, and certainly captures enough of Lovecraft's charm to be in the top tier of his film adaptations (though that's a perilously low bar to clear). But it's still a reminder that to successfully adapt great art** requires equally great art, but of a radically different kind. It's not enough to merely enjoy the artist you're adapting; you have to be able to find the fundamental strength of that art, and then transfer that strength into an entirely new medium which is constructed with equal craft towards evoking that same ineffable feeling. Not a thing which is easily done. But thankfully Price and Corman were artists enough in their own right to make this an entertaining version of the thing that they did well, even if it loses something from its literary source. And as Lovecraft adaptations go, hey, at least this is better than BLEEDERS.   

* One irritation once things get going is that Price-as-Curwen, as well as his eventual villainous collaborators Lon Chaney Jr. and third wheel Milton Parsons (prolific bit player, with uncredited roles in everything from WHITE HEAT to MARNIE), wear mud-facial makeup, I guess to give them a corpse-y look, or to visually distinguish Price-as-Curwen from Price-as-Charles. But it’s never applied evenly (the faces are brown-gray, but their necks and hands just look more bright pink by comparison!) and it's really distracting to look at. They should probably just have trusted Price to differentiate the roles via his performance (though poor Charles doesn’t really get to do much to distinguish himself). I don’t know what make up artist Ted Coodley (PANIC IN YEAR ZERO, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM) thought he was doing here, but it’s not a winner. Maybe it was less noticeable in a grainy grindhouse print? Sometimes the era of HD has its drawbacks.

** Not that I would claim Lovecraft as a great artist (though Poe indisputably was), but he was certainly one who made deliberate and, broadly, successful choices in his chosen medium.