Here's a rarity for you: a gaslight movie with a male victim. 1962's The Premature Burial is a Roger Corman movie very loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name. At first I thought it was no more than pretty, ridiculous schlock but I started to like the movie more as it went on.
Ray Milland plays Guy Carrell, a wealthy gentlemen residing in a massive manor located on a perpetually mist shrouded moor.
I mean, the fog machine must have been running every single day of shooting. Whether it's a desperate chase, a pleasant afternoon stroll, or, of course, a funeral, it always looks exactly the same outside, which helps give the whole film a dreamlike quality.
The house is beautiful, too, with lincoln green walls, brown wainscoting. and cherry Red Vine candles. But note the fellow's brown tweed tailcoat. I think the costume designer never heard of a frock coat.
Emily (Hazel Court) pleads with Guy to marry her, promising eternal, unfaltering devotion. Of course, once they're married, she starts trying to change him, like insisting he give up his silly, morbid obsession with premature burial.
She has him destroy the elaborate tomb he's set up with a casket that breaks apart when the occupant pulls a cord. But, naturally, given the title of the film, we all know what's coming.
The movie is ridiculous but in such a dreamlike way it kind of works. Apparently Francis Ford Coppola was assistant director on this one. Some of the production design kind of recalls Coppola's Dracula.
The Premature Burial is available now on The Criterion Channel as part of "Grindhouse Gothic", a collection of Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe.
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